


Mythal's Mark

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Elvhen Ascension [11]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ancient Elves (Dragon Age), Cheating, Complicated Relationships, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Difficult Decisions, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Elvhenan, Elvhenan Culture and Customs, Emotional Manipulation, Foreshadowing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infidelity, Jealousy, M/M, Magic, Mentor/Protégé, Mentors, One-Sided Attraction, POV Lavellan (Dragon Age), POV Solas (Dragon Age), POV The Iron Bull (Dragon Age), Pining Solas (Dragon Age), Plot, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Religion, Sexual Tension, Sexuality Crisis, Solas is Fen'Harel (Dragon Age), Spirits, The Fade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 19:15:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Lavellan's connection to the Dread Wolf, a recurrent figure in his dreams since childhood, has never been something he dwells on - the dreams are only a fact of life, a curiosity that lingers in his head from time to time.When Solas, quietly curious, begins to delve into the nature of this connection, he and Lavellan both are taken away with what they find.





	1. Chapter 1

It was grating, in a way.

Morrigan explained element after element: the depictions in the mosaics, the puzzles, even the statues. It was well enough for the benefits of Iron Bull and Dorian, but she kept catching _Lavellan’s_ eye, as if she thought he needed explanation himself.

“Strange that Fen’Harel should be depicted here,” she said. “It’s like… I don’t know, like depicting Andraste naked in a Chantry.”

“Your ignorance becomes you,” Lavellan said tightly, and Morrigan turned to glare at him, surprise glinting in her amber eyes. “Fen’Harel is depicted everywhere. No, we don’t worship him, not as we do the general pantheon, but he is _everywhere_.” Lavellan took a step closer, and Morrigan kept his gaze, not flinching. “The god of misfortunes, a trickster, and yet the one we ever offer to. Why? Because we seek his protection. Because _he_ offers protection that other gods will not, would not.”

“I thought the ancient elves above such quaint superstition,” Morrigan said.

Lavellan laughed. It was jagged to his own ears: he was exhausted. When would Corypheus come? Did they have _time_ for this? The puzzles were making his headache, and he only wanted to lie down and rest, but they didn’t have time, not at all. When would it end?

He thought of the diary of the Grey Warden, the Hero of Ferelden. Morrigan was the daughter of _Flemeth_ – Asha’Bellanar, Witch of the Wilds. She was a powerful witch, always wanting more, and the eluvians… Lavellan hadn’t allowed himself to let on that he knew what they were already. He’d asked Varric about them, too, about Merrill of the Sabrae’s attempt at restoration…

“You should know as a mage,” Lavellan said softly, “that superstition comes from myth – myth from history, lost long before. The context goes, but we cannot _possibly_ know how Fen’Harel was viewed, precisely, in the time when this temple flourished. You ought show more caution. You know not where you tread.”

“And you do?” Morrigan asked, arching her eyebrows. “Tis a wonder I missed it, the staff on your back – or has that mark of yours made you an expert in all things magical?”

Lavellan landed on the last stone, and the thrum of magic in the air sung directly through his core, making his skin tingle, making the mark give an answering rush of heat that ran up his arm. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it wasn’t pleasant, and he exhaled.

“Come,” he said, and led the way back toward the petitioner’s entrance.

He didn’t let himself flinch as he heard the elves come up behind them, and he put up his hand in a silent gesture for the others not to react either, not to lash out. He could feel Solas on his left, Morrigan on his right: behind him, Bull and Dorian.

“Lift your hood,” said the elf standing at the outcrop in Mythal’s Temple, and Lavellan hesitated, one hand still on his daggers, ready. The weapons were trained on them, but the elves didn’t even move from their places even minutely: they were utterly still in their rows, their armour not even clinking against itself. “That I might see your face.”

“I’ll lift mine if you lift yours,” Lavellan said. He spoke quietly, but his voice carried in the room, and he saw the other elf’s eyes narrow underneath the shadow of it, but he pushed back his hood. In the same moment, Lavellan copied him, and his hair, loose beneath the hood except for two braids to keep it in place, came half-free about his shoulders.

“You wear Mythal’s vallaslin,” the elf said slowly. “Why?”

“Why?” Lavellan repeated. “We still wear vallaslin – this hasn’t changed.”

“Yes,” the elf said impatiently, “but why hers? Does all your clan wear Mythal’s vallaslin?”

Lavellan glanced to Solas, silently looking for the ideal answer to give, but his lips were pressed tightly together, and his gaze was on the foreign elf, not Lavellan himself. Lavellan inhaled, raising his chin.

“We pick our vallaslin, based on the qualities we seek to embody, to pledge ourselves to. Care was always high in my regard; justice, wisdom. When I took my vallaslin, I sought to be my clan’s protector. I wanted to be the clan’s keeper of lore, as a hahren.”

“You’re a _hahren_?” the elf asked, tilting his head.

“No. I’m too young, I— I left my clan because greater things are at stake – Corypheus marches now, as you kow. We _need_ to stop him. What is this place? What…?”

“We guard Mythal’s Temple,” the elf began to explain. Always the explanations, and yet…

\--

“Sounds rather like destiny,” Dorian said, as Lavellan stared down at the smooth surface of the Well of Sorrows, feeling as if he was about to vomit. “Mythal’s Temple, Mythal’s wisdom, _you_ with Mythal’s ink on your face.”

“There is something in what he says,” Abelas said. “Destiny, here—"

“No,” muttered Solas, and Lavellan took a step forward.

When Morrigan tried to catch his arm, he lashed out with the mark’s power, and gritted his teeth when she hissed in pain. It didn’t make him feel better. Why should it have? Hurting people was never the way to satisfaction. He wished, sometimes, that it was.

\--

At Skyhold, Lavellan held a pack of ice against the side of his head, and tried to keep his breathing even. The whispers were constant at the edges of his consciousness, but they were beginning to settle into place. It was like he was digesting them, he supposed, allowing himself to understand them better – it was an overlap of languages, of elvish and the common tongue alike, and even pieces of Tevene, of Orlesian, of Antivan, of Nevarran… So many languages, criss-crossing over one another, and the scant words he knew in one language overlapped with others, clumsy, complicated.

He’d make sense of it.

He’d have to.

“You _foolish_ child,” snapped the voice coming into the room, and Lavellan pressed the ice harder against his temple, not looking up to meet Solas’ gaze. He’d never heard the other man sound so angry, his voice cracking with desperate fury, and he watched Solas’ wrapped feet pace on the ground.

No one ever told Solas to wear boots.

“I _told_ you!” he growled. “And you ignored me. Has my advice meant nothing to you? You’ve given yourself to the service of an elven god!”

“I couldn’t let Morrigan do it,” Lavellan said lowly, trying his best to keep his breathing even. The whispers grew quieter, at least – that was some mercy. “She’s power hungry. You can see it in the way she is, radiating from her, she—”

“And you aren’t?” Solas demanded. Lavellan looked up at him. “You scarcely hesitated! You’re so _curious_ about everything, so eager for knowledge, and that’s respectable, lethallin, but you were so _blinded_ that you—”

“You think,” Lavellan whispered, astonished by how coldly angry his own voice was, “that I _wanted_ this? How _dare_ you?”

He stood on shaky feet, dropping the ice to the side, and he took a step forward. Solas was taller than him, but Lavellan didn’t let that stop him, moving forward and shoving his hand hard against the other elf’s chest, and Solas _stared_ at him as if it was something baffling for another person to touch him.

“Every time,” Lavellan said. “I don’t know why I bother. I don’t know why I bother with you! I didn’t _want_ this. I didn’t want this mark on my hand, I didn’t want to drink from the Well of Sorrows, I didn’t want any of this! Do you know why I drank from the Well of Sorrows? Because I knew I couldn’t let Morrigan! I _knew_ she was untrustworthy, and when I asked you, you said no – so what else was I to do? Ask Bull to drink? Dorian?”

“Your imagined destiny—”

“I didn’t say that!” Lavellan snapped. “_Dorian_ did! And he can’t fucking tell a halla’s brow from a mabari’s backside, so don’t attribute his enlightened elvhen commentary to me! Must you always be like this? Everything I do, you pick me apart, everything, everything! You remind me to be vigilant when I couldn’t be moreso if I had eyes in the back of my head – you are so concerned with the Fade it sometimes seems you can’t even see the trees in front of you!”

Lavellan exhaled hard, rubbing his hand over his eyes.

“You treat me like such a _child_, Solas, and what is it, I _beg_ of you, that I’ve done to earn it? Every time I think I have your respect, you turn around and remind me I’m not worthy! Every time you say _my people_, Solas, instead of _ours_, it cuts me like a blade!”

Solas was staring at him, stunned, his mouth open, and Lavellan wished he could stop his own tongue moving, but it _wouldn’t_. It was like everything was pouring out at once, and the whispers were loud again, now, drowning out the sound of his own voice so that he only heard the _roar_ of it all in his ears.

“Do you really think so little of me?” he asked, all but shouted the question. “Do you really think I wanted this wisdom, this power, when it came with such a price? When it hisses in my ears like I have my head beneath a waterfall, and makes my head ache like someone’s driving an axe into it?

“It’s not like it is for you, for me. I wasn’t born with this, I didn’t _grow_ with this, I got this crammed into my body with no warning, had my memories ripped out of my head, and now I’ve had a few hundred other voices crammed in as well, and you have the _audacity_ to act like it’s something I’ve done on a whim for a bit of weekend fun!”

The room felt like it was shaking. Was it? Was the ground quaking under his feet, was that _him_…?

“Lethallin—”

“And you must think I’m so _fucking_ stupid,” Lavellan went on. His hand was aching, the mark _burning_, rippling up his arm. “You, whose name is _pride_ – you tell me you were just an elf, wandering around, not a city elf, not a Dalish elf. What, you expect me to believe that? You expect me to think you just came into existence in the middle of the woods, got trained in magic by some mysterious travelling elves that are neither Dalish nor otherwise, and just existed in the Fade? Do you think I’m an _idiot_?”

“What you think—”

“I don’t want an explanation,” Lavellan snapped impatiently. “I’m not asking you to tell me lies, if you fled your clan or avoided your vallaslin or even left a Circle, because I know that’s what you’ll do if I press, you'll lie – it’s none of my business, and perhaps you don’t trust me well enough to tell me, and that’s _alright_. That’s _why_ I don’t press. Because I try to respect you, and you, you treat me like a… You’re not my _keeper!” _His own voice was roaring above the noise in his ears, and there was so much _green_—

“Calm down,” Solas said, his hands clapping down on Lavellan’s shoulders, and it was like it all stopped at once. Silence hit him like a lightning strike, leaving him dizzy: the whispering stopped abruptly, the green glow fizzled away, and he realized how he’d been holding his fist, the room had been _shaking_—

“I’m so sorry,” Lavellan whispered.

A little dust shook down from the rafters, and he heard the noise on the stairs as Dorian and Fiona ran down from the library on one side, Vivienne running in from the balcony on the other. They were all staring at him, held tightly in Solas’ hands as if Solas thought he was about to explode, and he needed to keep his palms on the fuse.

“We heard the shouting,” Dorian said, looking between the two of them. “Bit of a tiff?”

“So rude of you to do all that in elvish, dear things,” Vivienne said softly, looking alarmed, although not much of it showed in her face – only a little in the wideness of her eyes, the set of her jaw. “How ever will Varric make his notes?”

“Debating literature, I take it?” Dorian asked.

Lavellan’s mouth felt as if it was sizzling. He didn’t say anything, breathing heavily.

“We’re fine, thank you,” Solas murmured. “Arguing about history, in fact, not literature. It was my fault – the Inquisitor has a headache, and I oughtn’t have so needled him when he needs to rest.”

“The Temple of Mythal?” Dorian asked.

“Mmm,” Solas said.

Hot humiliation burned up Lavellan’s spine. Losing his temper, screaming like a child, but worse than that – with all this _power_, Gods, his hand ached, his arm ached, as if he’d shot something molten through his veins.

“We’ll leave you be, then,” Fiona said.

“Quite,” Vivienne said, from the other side of the room, and when they retreated, Solas gently took his arm, leading him across the room. Lavellan went easily as Solas led him to the door to his quarters, hesitated for a moment, and then began to walk with him up the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” Lavellan said again, when Solas brought him into his bedroom, gently pushing him to sit on the padded chest at the end of his bed. “I’m so sorry, Solas, I didn’t mean… That was so— I hope you understand I don’t think—”

“Peace,” Solas said. “You…”

He dropped into a crouch in front of Lavellan, holding Lavellan’s hands very gently between his own, and Lavellan pressed his lips together, staring down at him. He wasn’t prone to crying, really. Bull brought him to tears sometimes, and at times he was so frustrated his eyes watered slightly, but he wasn’t naturally tended toward crying, not really…

He wished he could cry, now. There’d be a catharsis in it.

“I’ve been unfair to you,” Solas murmured, keeping his gaze. “I’m sorry. Is the mark causing you much pain?”

“Only some,” Lavellan said. “It happens when I overtax myself. S’my fault. I didn’t mean those things I said to you.”

“You did,” Solas said softly. “I’m _sorry_, I didn’t… I didn’t think of myself as being very hard on you. But you’re right – often, it must seem I think the worst of you, when I only mean to help you. And what good is help from someone you feel doesn’t respect you?” Solas sighed, squeezing Lavellan’s hands, and he looked so _ashamed_, so ashamed that Lavellan actually felt awkward about it, he couldn’t possibly have made Solas look so… “And about— About where I come from—”

“Please don’t tell me,” Lavellan whispered. “Not if it’s not the truth.”

Solas thought about it, for a moment, narrowing his eyes, looking grave. “The truth, lethallin, is… _complicated_.”

“Yes,” Lavellan said. “And lies are very simple, are they?”

“No,” Solas murmured. “I suppose not. But I worry for you, lethallin, pledged to one of these gods…”

“You don’t even believe in them,” Lavellan said, indignant, desperate.

“Do you?” Solas asked. “You were praying, weren’t you, after the business at Adamant – to Mythal, I imagine. Did she answer?”

“It isn’t about answering,” Lavellan said. “Our prayer isn’t like the prayer the Andrastians do – it may as well be a focus for meditation. You _know_ that, you know…”

“I worry for you,” Solas repeated. There was something desperate in his eyes, and Lavellan looked away from it, _uncomfortable_ with the depth of the feeling he saw there. It was upsetting, to think that Solas didn’t care, but seeing him care _this_ much was overwhelming. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t want any of this, I know that, I… Please, Mahanon, believe me when I tell you that if I am impatient with you, if I am… It is no personal slight. I am too much in my own head, as I’ve heard some of you say, and in the Fade – you’re correct.”

“I shouldn’t have shouted at you,” Lavellan said. “I’ve never… I’ve never shouted at anybody like that before, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” Solas murmured, giving him a small smile. “I’ve weathered far worse than a bit of shouting in my lifetime. You should sleep, you look exhausted. Shall I send for the Iron Bull?”

“If Bull comes, I won’t sleep at all,” Lavellan murmured, and he was slow about moving to lie down, not even removing his clothes – he drew off his jacket and kicked off his boots, and that was it. He watched, silent, as Solas hung up the jacket. “Do you have children, Solas?”

“No,” Solas said. “Once, I…” He trailed off. He didn’t say anything, for a long moment, and then, “Your vallaslin, lethallin. Do you know why they wore the same, at the Temple of Mythal? Do you know what it represented, in times past?”

Lavellan didn’t answer. His eyes felt so heavy, and the whispers were soothing, somehow, like waves beneath a boat.

“Never mind,” Solas murmured, his voice distant. “Do you still dream, sometimes, of the Dread Wolf?”

The whispers overtook him, and Lavellan slept like a stone.


	2. Chapter 2

In the land of dreams, all was different.

\--

Mahanon, tired from his day’s journey, stared up at the stone face of the dog, the great big dog… It had flowers and coins between its paws, and it was here, in the clearing, where the altar to Mythal was – the dog must be a god, too, a great big dog, maybe Mythal’s dog… It was facing the wrong way, though.

The hahrens had never mentioned Mythal’s dog, but it was so _big_, and he knew it would have to be safe, because the gods would protect him, wouldn’t they? Mythal’s statue was raised too high off the ground, but he could get up to her dog, and he climbed awkwardly onto the pedestal, leaning into it and putting his face against its neck, like he’d lean into a halla sitting down.

It was starting to get cold, and it was so dark…

But the dog was warm, and its fur was soft under his cheek.

\--

It was raining, and he was walking a path. It was a stone path, and it was floating in the air, and the skies were red, but he didn’t stop. He had to keep walking. He had to make it to the top, he had to make it there.

He could hear the paws behind him on the stone road, and he knew without looking that the paws were _huge_, as big as he was, and he tried not to cry, tried not to scream or cry out.

“Go away!” he cried out.

The wolf’s voice sounded funny, the words he said separate from the meaning Lavellan heard, when it said, “_We are going to the same place. We may as well follow the same road.”_

\--

He was running in the woods, his bow in hand, and he laughed as he flew into the trees, the ground abandoned beneath his feet as he leapt so easily up to the branches, through the leaves, walked on them like they were the ground.

It was chasing him. He knew it was chasing him, could hear it loping behind him, its paws hard on the ground. It could leap into the trees just like he could, and he knew that it would, but not yet, not yet…

\--

Lavellan screamed when the wolf finally pounced, and its teeth ripped at his throat.

“You’re not killing me,” he said, feeling blood hot on his throat, seeing the drip of it on the wolf’s teeth, and yet feeling no pain, no difficulty breathing. He put his hand up to his throat, and it came away clean, the wound gone: the wolf’s teeth were clean as it turned away from him, disappearing into the shadows.

_“I killed you at the very beginning,”_ the wolf said. _“It will take time for you to see how._”

\--

He had gotten it off before he fell asleep, he knew he had, he _knew_, and yet the makeup was on his face again, covering up the vallaslin. He saw his face as if from the outside, completely clean of the bloodwriting, and he felt so ashamed, so _ashamed_.

That was his connection to the Dalish, to the gods, to elvishness, and he wanted it back, he wanted it back—

“_How angry the Keeper is!”_ the Dread Wolf growled, and it sounded gleeful with its strange, unknown words, even as Lavellan wiped desperately at his face, trying to get it off, get it _off_. The rain was falling upwards, meaning that none of it landed on his face, and he let out a desperate noise as he tried to catch some on the cloth, desperate to wash his face of the makeup hiding his vallaslin.

The Dread Wolf was circling around him again and again, a black mass at the edge of his vision, just outside the glade he was in, and Lavellan heaved in a gasp as he rubbed hard at his forehead, his cheeks, trying desperately to bare the vallaslin again. _“No, hide it, hide it!”_ the Dread Wolf crowed, as if this were some moment of victory, “_You can be free of it!”_

“I want to be free _with_ it!” Lavellan snapped, his voice cracking, and the Dread Wolf laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

\--

“Where are you leading me?” Lavellan asked. It was a day when they were not at odds, walking as they were in woods that were unknown to him – so different were these to the forests of Ferelden, even of the Brecilian forest, deep and so vibrantly green. Where was he? He didn’t know.

“_Where are **you** leading **me**, da’len?”_ replied the Dread Wolf, even though Lavellan was tracking it, looking for the places where it had bent back brushes or left prints in the wet leaves, where its paws had marked the damp mud.

“We go to the same place.”

“_Yessss_,” the Dread Wolf said, and led him onward.

When Lavellan saw the first of the crystal spires, glittering in the sun, standing so proudly against the sky and looking like they had been made of frost, a whole city made of shining, glossy glass, he fell to his knees, and he cried, until the Dread Wolf nudged him forward.

\--

And the night after the Temple of Mythal…

He was back in the woods he’d grown up in, bright sunlight glittering in through the scattered canopy over his head. They were in the midst of the Brecilian Forest, now, and he moved with silent feet on the ground before him, feeling the dry leaves beneath his soles. He wore no shoes, and no heavy: only green travelling clothes that allowed him to better blend in with the undergrowth, the bushes and trees, and only his jerkin was made of leather, thick enough to stop any arrow that found him from piercing too deeply.

“It’s been months,” Lavellan said, looking down at the bow in his hands. He didn’t use a bow, these days, not usually, but what did these days matter? This was a different day, here, a different place, a different man. “I thought perhaps I’d lost you.”

“_I will always find you_,” came the reply, low and growling, seeming to echo through the woods. “_No matter how far you stray from the path_.”

Once upon a time, the Dread Wolf’s words had been… difficult. He had always understood them, every one, but the understanding had been different from the words spoken: it had never been elvish as he had known it, and nor had it truly sounded like the pieces of ancient elvish he had learned, or heard in fragments.

Now…

Was it ancient elvish that was spoken? Or was it merely his dream, applying new contexts, new meanings, now that he was older, now that times had changed? It had been more than months – it had been at least two years, since last he had dreamed of the Dread Wolf…

“Guide me,” Lavellan said.

“_Do I guide you, child, when the path is yours, inevitable?”_ asked the Dread Wolf. Lavellan heard the underbrush crackle and brush under great, black paws. He didn’t turn to look. He never looked at it directly – only knew that it was there, and followed the path that it lay, or ran when it came in chase. He had caught glimpses – black fur, great shoulders and pointed ears, eyes the colour of saltpeter, but he’d never caught a solid look at it. He’d never wanted to. “_Is that what we are to one another?”_

“Are you real?” Lavellan asked. “Are you… a figment? Of my own mind? Or are you something else?”

“_You have asked me if I am a demon before_.”

“And never have you answered me.”

_“Never have you asked in the right way_.”

“Is this the Fade?”

_“The Fade is the land of dreams,” _the Dread Wolf said. Its breath was hot on the back of Lavellan’s neck, and Lavellan closed his eyes, knowing that it was directly behind him, because it felt the hot air from its nostrils through his hair, and imagined its great jaws open enough to see its white, white teeth… “_The Fade is the land of all you would be.”_

“Don’t riddles get old?”

“_No_,” Fen’Harel growled. “_And nor do I.”_

“Lead me, then.”

“_You lead me. As I say, it is your path.”_

“Where to?”

_“Out of the forest… Or farther in. I can never tell with you.”_

Lavellan laughed. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

“_I don’t trust **you**,” _Fen’Harel replied. “_Except for that I do_.”

“Except that I do too,” Lavellan said. He leaned slowly back on his heels, back and back, until he fell shoulders first into thick, dark fur. He was wearing his winter coat – it was soft and downy and thick as anything, and Lavellan sighed. He turned his face into the coat, buried his nose in it, and it smelled of nothing – that’s how you knew it wasn’t a real wolf, because it didn’t _stink_.

“_This isn’t leading anywhere_,” Fen’Harel said.

“This is where I want to be,” Lavellan whispered. “I just— I want to rest a while.”

“_While you can_,” Fen’Harel said darkly, and Lavellan ignored it.

\--

The next morning, Lavellan descended the stairs slowly, already armoured for the journey of the day. They weren’t moving directly to the Altar of Mythal – they still had loose ends to tie up in the Frost Basin, and he wanted time to digest the voices. A night’s sleep had done him no end of good: they were easier to tune out, now, and he could choose to concentrate on them, if he needed.

When he moved out into the throne room, something must have shown in his demeanour, because the serving girl that came up to him flinched and lowered her gaze before she pressed the message into his hands.

“Where are you from?” he asked quietly, tilting his head and keeping his voice low, and she risked a glance up at his face.

“Kirkwall, your worship,” she said, voice shaking.

“I visited your vhenadahl once,” Lavellan murmured. “It was a glorious tree, and something to be proud of.” She gasped, staring up at him, and he reached out, gently touching her arm. He hesitated for just a moment before he said, “You needn’t be frightened of me. I’m not a noble. You and I are of the same making.”

“But you’re Dalish,” she said, biting her lip.

“The vallaslin is under my skin,” Lavellan said, “but deeper still is the blood that binds us.”

“Thank you, your worship,” she whispered. “You mean— You mean a lot, to us. To the elves.”

“I’m glad,” Lavellan murmured. “What’s your name?”

“Illyna,” she said.

“Illyna. I’m sorry, I’ve kept you from your duties. Please, don’t let me keep you.”

She curtsied deep and clumsy, and then rushed off and down one of the stairwells, likely making her way toward the kitchens. He looked at the message she’d delivered, a missive from Cassandra, detailing their route down to the Frost Basin…

“Many wouldn’t have bothered to speak to her,” said Solas at his shoulder, and Lavellan turned to look at him.

“I didn’t know you were there,” Lavellan said. “Sorry, were you waiting for me?”

“I came from the Undercroft,” Solas said, shrugging his shoulders, and Lavellan nodded his head.

The whispers had grown a little louder, and he listened to the scattered words amongst them – _elf, elf-friend, elf-foe, so slow and so long, not like the quick ones, how cold it is without our furs…_ \- but didn’t let himself focus on it. There was a running commentary of that abstract nature when he walked forward. It was a connection to the Fade, in a way: no doubt, there was some context to it that he was missing. The elvish he knew mixed and mingled with that which he didn’t, but he _did_ know it, now: he knew that it was ancient, knew that it was not the elvish he’d grown up with, and yet it made as much sense to him as anything.

“She was frightened of me,” Lavellan said quietly. “Varric was… We played cards, a few night back, and he said afterward that it’s difficult to see me as a person sometimes, rather than as the Inquisitor.”

“I imagine that hurt,” Solas murmured, in an understanding tone. “From Varric, of all people. Walk with me, lethallin.”

They walked together from the keep, out away from the grounds, and into the area outside of the keep. Lavellan was quiet for a long time. They fell into step – it wasn’t always easy, with Solas’ long legs, more tended to loping than walking, but they managed it today.

“Thank you,” Lavellan said quietly, “for last night. It was wrong of me to lose my temper with you, the way that I did. You didn’t deserve that.”

“On the contrary, I believe that I did,” Solas said. “I was asking you questions, before you fell asleep. Do you remember what they were?”

Lavellan thought of the Dread Wolf’s soft fur beneath him, sleeping in the crook of its shoulder; he thought of Solas’ expression when first he mentioned the dreams he’d had as a child; he remembered the shudders and grimaces that he had seen when he had mentioned the idea of dreaming of Fen’Harel, as a child. And he had never confessed it, not to anybody in the clan, not ever.

“About Mythal’s vallaslin?” Lavellan asked, turning his head to meet Solas’ gaze. “I assumed they wore it because they were devoted to Mythal.”

“You must understand, lethallin, that in the Fade, I have learned secrets, learned histories, that are known to no one. Not even your Dalish.”

“You’ve said this before,” Lavellan murmured.

“Light that torch, will you?” Solas asked, pointing to one of the braziers alongside the path, and Lavellan frowned, but then he reached for his pocket. “No,” Solas said, catching his wrist. “Use your magic.”

Lavellan looked Solas in the eyes, but then he obeyed. It was strange, the way it felt, as if he was pulling energy from the air around him, and then channelling it through the mark in his hand. It was barely anything, to create the spark – he’d studied how precisely to conjure fire, reading up on different spells, but mostly just… _magic_. Concentrated, focused, making effect from cause: your intent. The blaze glinted green when it sparked into life, but then it evened out to the familiar orange-red of any flame. Solas put out his hand, palm toward the flame, seeming to feel its warmth.

“In the time of the ancient elves,” Solas said quietly, “vallaslin was… not as you know it. You saw the way that Abelas looked at you, when you described what it was that drew you to Mythal’s markings, and chose them as your vallaslin?”

“I was more surprised that he thought I could be an elder,” Lavellan said. His voice was very quiet, even more so than Solas’: he couldn’t really convince it to be any louder. “But I suppose it makes sense, to them. As ancient as they are… He called me shemlen.”

“You are shemlen, as he knows the word,” Solas reminded him in a gentle tone, and Lavellan nodded his head silently. “Vallaslin means something different to him, too. In ancient times, elven society was… There were firm differences between the classes. Noble elves and common elves, rich elves and poor elves. As in so many rich societies, too, there were slaves.”

Solas’ tone was impossibly melancholy, wreathed in sadness, and Lavellan stepped closer, so that the gentle flicker of the brazier was between them. Solas’ gaze was focused on the flame.

“The vallaslin was a way one marked one’s slaves. If a noble pledged their loyalty with one god or another – with Mythal, or Elgar’nan, or Andruil, and so on – that would be the mark they placed upon their slaves.”

Almost without thinking, Lavellan put his hand on the side of his face, stroking the line of his cheekbone, where the leaf design was imprinted on the flesh.

“So the elves at the Temple of Mythal,” Lavellan said evenly. “They were slaves?”

“Pledged to the Temple’s protection,” Solas said.

“I see.” Lavellan bit the inside of his lip, gently worrying it between his teeth, concentrating on the sensation as best he could. “So when— When I told that story, about my keeper, about hiding my vallaslin…?”

“It would have been a capital crime, in times past,” Solas said softly. “When you described your keeper’s anger, the way her magic burned the air, the fear you felt, it was as though I was anew hearing of a memory I have seen a dozen times over in the Fade. The context changed, and yet the core remained precisely the same.”

Lavellan closed his eyes.

“I wanted to ask you,” he said, “about— about… You said that, um, that dreaming about Fen’Harel, that it was a kind of… That it might mean demons were trying to— Are you sure?”

Solas watched him very carefully, seeming to weigh up his response, before he said, “It is impossible to sure of what goes on in another’s dreams, lethallin, without entering them oneself. If Cole says that the dreams feel uninhibited by spirits, when he feels the echo of them in your memory, then I trust his judgement. But were I your keeper, I might have worried. Particularly if they started so spontaneously as a child, and—”

“It wasn’t spontaneous,” Lavellan said. His own voice sounded defensive, although he didn’t mean it to – what defence did the Dread Wolf need, a monster of mythology, when Solas didn’t even believe in it?

“It wasn’t?” Solas asked.

“No,” Lavellan said. “It was… I was very young. I couldn’t have been older than five or six, it’s one of my earliest memories. I had been playing hide and seek with our hahren and the other children, but I had run too far off, and I don’t know why, but I ran and I ran and I ran. I imagined there was something— Not on my heels, I didn’t feel like I was being chased. But there was somewhere I needed to go, I _needed_ to get there as quickly as possible, because if I didn’t, something terrible would happen.

“You know how you get those fancies in your head, when you’re a child? Those little ideas from games that you take too seriously, that overtake you as naught else? There was this… I had to get to the altar, there was an altar in the woods and as soon as I got to it, I could save everybody. It was like my little race against time.”

“Did you find it?” Solas asked.

“It was dark, by the time I got there,” Lavellan said. “I left my offering on Mythal’s altar, some… Some white flowers I’d grabbed out of the ground, some leaves, but it was so cold. There was a great statue of Fen’Harel, like the ones we see out in the Emerald Graves. The wolf laid down, his head up, and there were some offerings between his paws.

“Sometimes, Dalish would pay tribute to him, to safeguard their journey, or just— just to beg him not to destroy anything. I was only a child, I didn’t… I saw the offerings, I saw a statue – to me, that meant safety. I hadn’t connected in my head the statue with the monster that my elders threatened me with. I just saw a statue with offerings on its paws, and I thought, oh, this is safe. So I climbed up, curled against its shoulder, and I went to sleep there. Curled up, very small… And I dreamt that there was real fur there, that it was a real _body_, that I was safe.” Lavellan touched the warm metal of the brazier’s cage, swallowing. “The dreams started, after that. Just chasing each other through the woods.”

“And they ended?” Solas asked, sounding rapt, leaning in close toward him. “Those dreams, they stopped?”

He hesitated for too long in saying yes, and Solas stepped around the brazier, leaning in toward him.

“They didn’t stop?” he asked in a whisper. “Did they?”

“I’ve never told anyone,” Lavellan said. “Not in my clan, not outside of my clan, when you looked at me, I was… Elves are so superstitious about Fen’Harel, you know that they are, and I didn’t yet know how you would react, I didn’t want you to think that I was possessed, or _mad_.”

“When did you last dream of Fen’Harel?” Solas asked.

“Last night,” Lavellan said, and Solas put his hands on Lavellan’s cheeks. His palms, his fingertips, were warm and dry against his skin, and there was a look in his eyes Lavellan had never seen before, except perhaps for with the Spirit of Wisdom on the Exalted Plains, and for a terrifying second Lavellan wondered if Solas was going to put him out of his mystery.

“What did you— What did he say?”

“That he’d always find me, no matter how much I strayed from my path,” Lavellan aid, feeling the slight squeeze of Solas’ fingers against his cheeks, his thumbs against his cheekbones. “That it was my path, and that— He always talks in circles, it’s always riddles, with him, it’s never a straight answer.”

“Was it different?” Solas asked.

“What?”

“Was it _different_?” Solas repeated, a sharp demand. “Than before?”

“How did you know that?”

“Tell me how,” Solas said sharply, an order. “Tell me how it was different.”

“The language was clearer,” Lavellan said. “Before, he was… He always spoke in elvish, but it never sounded right, and me understanding what he was saying was different than understanding the _words_ he was saying. Now, my comprehension was complete.”

“He spoke to you in elvish?”

“Ancient elvish.”

“Did you dream of the Dread Wolf,” Solas said, voice trembling, grip almost painfully tight now, “on the night you hid your vallaslin?”

“You’re frightening me now, Solas.”

“The feeling is quite mutual,” Solas said. “Did you?”

“He laughed at me,” Lavellan said. “Because he said— He said…” Lavellan’s voice was breaking. It wasn’t tears, he wasn’t going to cry, but his voice was hoarse and cracking, and he was _frightened_. He’d never been frightened of Solas before, and it wasn’t his magic, it was the look in his eyes, so desperate, the grip on his cheeks— “He said to keep on the makeup. I was trying to wash it off, and I couldn’t, and he said to keep it. To keep the makeup, that I could be free of the vallaslin. And I said… I said I didn’t want to be free _of_ it. I wanted to be free _with_ it.”

“And he laughed at you,” Solas whispered. “Oh, lethallin, I’m _sorry_.”

“How did I know that?” Lavellan asked. He tried not to show too much feeling in his face, tried not to let his voice rise. “If this wasn’t a spirit, if it was just my own dream, how did it know to say…?”

Solas searched his face, like he’d find the answer in it.

“I know a spell,” he said softly, “to remove the vallaslin. If you wish.”

“He said he killed me, once,” Lavellan said.

“That he’d killed you before?” Solas asked. His eyes were shining. “In another life, you mean?”

“No,” Lavellan said. “Fen’Harel said once… He said he’d already killed me. I just didn’t know how yet.”

Solas breathed in a ragged, desperate breath, and he stroked Lavellan’s face, his hair, and for a moment Lavellan felt so impossibly small—

“Let me remove it,” Solas said, sounding almost like he was begging. “Let me take those marks off your face, it cuts me to see marks of ownership on your skin, lethallin.”

“They’ll think it means I’m not Dalish anymore,” Lavellan said. “The Andrastians, they’ll think it means—”

“But _you’ll_ know what it means. You’ll know—”

“Do it,” Lavellan said. He nodded his head, breathing shakily, nodding, nodding—

He expected it to hurt, like the vallaslin had when it had been put on. It didn’t hurt, not at all.

It was like… warm breath on his skin.


	3. Chapter 3

“Kadan,” said Iron Bull as he came forward, and Solas watched, silent, as he reached to touch Lavellan’s fac. He was always impossibly gentle, where Lavellan was concerned – he was capable of being firm, and even being rough, in their games together, and yet outside of those games it seemed to Solas that the Iron Bull treated Lavellan as though he were made of crystal, as though he were something small and precious and fragile. “You wearing makeup?”

“Solas took off my vallaslin,” Lavellan said softly, touching the back of Bull’s hand, and the Bull’s gaze flickered to Solas. Dorian looked at him too, and Blackwall, all expressions of such suspicion, until Lavellan said, “I… They were slave markings, once upon a time. The Dalish, we didn’t know. I didn’t know. But that’s where they come from.”

“Oh, shit,” the Bull said softly, and then he leaned, pressing his forehead to Lavellan’s. Lavellan cupped one of his cheeks, the other tracing the base of his horn, and Solas felt an uncomfortable shift in his gut.

Not envy – Solas had never been attracted to men, not in all his hundreds of years, but… Something.

The Dread Wolf had dogged his steps for so long, and yet it wasn’t Solas, and who could it be, if not him? If it was no demon, no spirit, and not Fen’Harel himself, how could it be? He ached to reach out to the Inquisitor, to beg permission to sift through the memories he had of this faux-Dread Wolf himself – he wanted to _know_.

_He said he’d already killed me_.

It was too specific to be anything less than prophetic, even in isolation – and so too had the vision known of the irony in the vallaslin, and spoke of the same path… What could that mean? What could any of it mean, if it was no spirit? And this was no divination that might be attributed to mark from the Rift, not if it had been since he was a _child_…

And it would kill him.

Oh, it _hurt_, it ached, it cut at his very core, to know that it would kill him, that it _was_ killing him. The mark he ought never have had in the first place, that would be his death sentence, and he never wanted any of this.

Not ever.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian was saying softly to the Inquisitor. Such sympathy in his voice, and Solas wanted to be angry at the hypocrisy of it all, and yet had Pavus not said that he sought to go back to Tevinter, to work to undo all that was wrong in the Tevinter Imperium? Had he not grown from a thoughtless man, easily brushing off the weight of the slavery in the society he came from, to one who sought to fix those wrongs?

For all the good that it would do him, when the time came to tear down the Veil.

Solas turned his head away.

Dorian, Blackwall, and Bull chattered amongst themselves as they rode on down the mountain, toward the Frost Basin, and Solas was silent, riding alongside the Inquisitor. His gaze flickered to take him in, the grip he had on the reins, and his expression. His skin all but glowed in the morning light, the marks cleaned from his cheeks and his brow. It looked curiously bare, and yet it was a relief to see it so, to see the face of a young man free, and not the mask of slavery he’d worn before, unknowing.

“Mahanon?” he asked quietly.

“Mm?”

“What did you think your dreams meant, before all this?”

“I didn’t think they meant anything,” Lavellan murmured. “I thought it was a recurrent dream. It wasn’t a demon, I was certain of that, because he never tried to tempt me, never tried to get me to do anything. And I’m not a mage, so…”

“May I,” Solas said, and then stopped himself. “Would you object, were I to examine your memories of these dreams of yours? Of Fen’Harel?”

“I wanted to be my clan’s storyteller, once,” Lavellan said. He was looking straight forward, out over the mountains as they came down the crest, toward the main road. “I dreamed of… Finally making the stories sound _right_ when I told them. As it stands, they always come from a mesh of influences – stories and poems, other people’s words spliced awkwardly together. They never feel as if they’re my own. I rather liked the idea of it, you know. Taking care of the clan’s children. Telling stories, keeping lore.” Lavellan shifted in the saddle, shifting his grip on the reins, his fingers wrapping about the leather of it, twisting it between them. “I struggled to imagine how I could go home, after all this, with all these people calling me Herald. But I wanted to. I wanted to go home, so I imagined it anyway, even though I knew how they’d look at me. And now… I have no vallaslin. I couldn’t go back to that life.”

“I’m sorry,” Solas said. “If you— I didn’t mean to… If you wanted to keep the markings, I—”

“No,” Lavellan said. “No, I wanted them gone. If what you say is true, I don’t…” He exhaled, shaking his head. “But it isn’t about the vallaslin, anyway.” He turned his gaze, meeting Solas’ eye. “You think I’m going to die. From— From the mark? It’ll kill me?”

“Later,” Solas said softly. Ahead of them, he saw Dorian turn his head. The other three were some ways ahead on the path, too far to hear them, even for Bull to hear them, but there was no sense in avoiding caution entirely, not for something like this.

They would discuss it in the Fade.

\--

It was late in the night when they came to the camp in the Frost Basin. There would be other rifts to repair, even after facing Corypheus, Solas knew – they had repaired that which they could as they moved from one place to another, but even after all was done, still there would be small tears in the Veil for Lavellan to repair.

And to what end?

That Solas might rip it all down that much more completely, when time came?

But no, this was wrong: the breaks, the tears, they drove mad the spirits drawn through to this realm, so unfit as it was for them, and he didn’t want to cause pain for this world, before it had to end. Not unnecessarily.

He had done his circuit of the camp, laying down his wards, and when he came back to the tents, he saw Lavellan with Bull in their tent, the canopy wrought up higher than the others to allow for Bull’s horns. Lavellan was on his knees between the Qunari’s spread thighs, and with great care, he was drawing a comb through Lavellan’s hair, allowed loose from its bun and braids. The comb looked ridiculously small in his great hand, but Solas could see his lips moving, see that he was speaking to Lavellan.

It was not unheard of, a relationship as they had – a balance between dynamics, one fit for the bedroom, another fit for the field. Even in times past, Solas had known of lovers who took solace in a play at giving up their freedom, even for the shortest of times, and he understood the appeal. Power over another was one thing when taken, and yet when freely given – not of slaves pledging their lives, but of free men pledging their trust, their loyalty?

Lavellan found solace in Iron Bull’s attentions. Solas didn’t know that Lavellan would be such a pillar of strength, of leadership, without the Iron Bull to support him when he wasn’t before an audience, without him to offer support, a balm for the difficulties of his day.

Iron Bull looked up, meeting Solas’ gaze, and Solas saw the question pass over his face, the raised eyebrow, the parted lips. _You need him now?_

Solas shook his head, waving his hand slightly: _Not yet_.

Lavellan, eyes closed, didn’t see the silent conversation that passed over his head, and Solas moved past the tent, to the fire. Blackwall was polishing his armour, dressed only in a white chemise, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and Solas could see the way Dorian was watching him, as if Blackwall was the most riveting thing in all of Thedas.

“Tell me again,” Dorian said, casually, as if he didn’t really care, as if he was even remotely capable of tearing his gaze away from Blackwall’s arms, glistening with sweat. Blackwall was sitting on a log that served as a bench, and Dorian was reclining on the bedroll beside him, lounging back on a pillow wrapped in canvas.

“You haven’t got a book to bury your nose in?” Blackwall asked, and Solas saw the muscles ripple in his forearm and his shoulder as he leaned forward, saw the shift of the corded muscle in his neck. So did Dorian: he exhaled inaudibly, but Solas could see the shift of his lips as he did so.

“And there I thought you’d be the first to tell me a man might tire of books.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Blackwall said. “Ignorant louts like me don’t know how to read, remember?”

“Oh, no doubt you have other ways to spend your time,” Dorian replied. “Perhaps I’m trying to emulate you.”

“Emulate me?” Blackwall asked. His hand, loosely gripped on the polishing rag, froze on his breastplate, and he met Dorian’s exacting stare. Suspicion was writ in the planes of his face, his lips twisting.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dorian purred. “Don’t you know what that word _means_?”

Blackwall set his breastplate aside. The rag dropped on top of it. Solas watched, unmoving, as he came forward on his feet, leaning over the mage where he sat up on his elbows. Dorian froze, as if he scarcely dared to breathe, as Blackwall grabbed hold of his helmet, and then leaned back. Dorian followed after him with a slight lean of his head.

Solas cleared his throat.

It was telling, the way that Dorian _gasped_, flinched, leaned back further onto the bedroll. Blackwall, on the other hand, stayed precisely where he was, poised just over Dorian’s body.

“Solas?” Blackwall asked.

“I will be taking the Inquisitor on a journey through the Fade this evening,” Solas said softly. “I will leave it to you, Dorian, to monitor our wards whilst the two of us are indisposed.”

Dorian sat up, apparently forgetting that Blackwall was still leaning up against him, and he knocked against Blackwall’s shoulder, hissing an insult in Tevene and shoving the warrior away from him. Blackwall shoved him back, _hard_, and Solas could see the way that indignation mingled with desire in Dorian’s expression, in the language of his body, even as he forced himself to look at Solas.

Curious. So much had changed, in a thousand years – and yet so much remained the same. 

“Right,” Dorian said. “Of course. That is more than within my, ah, capabilities, but the Fade, does he really need…?”

“I need to ensure the Anchor is doing him no damage,” Solas said simply. “Particularly as we are soon to face Corypheus, it’s crucial to ensure that he is well. This evening would not be the best one for… distractions.”

Dorian’s mouth dropped open, his eyes wide, but the expression of surprise lasted for only a fraction of a section before he schooled himself back to his Tevinter graces.

Blackwall, on the other hand, looked at Solas uncomprehendingly for a moment, and Solas saw on his lips the repetition of the word in nothing more than a whisper: _distractions?_ Blackwall looked to Dorian, back to Solas, back to Dorian once more. Comprehension dawned like a sunrise.

He didn’t lean away.

“And what distractions could I possibly find? I shan’t be straying from camp, Solas. The spiders here are larger than dogs.”

“Oh, don’t worry, princess,” Blackwall said. “I’ll protect you from the big bad arachnids.”

“Oh, that’s a very complicated word!” Dorian said, turning his head to look at Blackwall, leaning in close toward him. “Who taught you that one?”

“Distractions,” Solas repeated, and Dorian had the good graces to look somewhat shamefaced as he stood to his feet, clearing his throat.

“I’ll… go and examine those wards,” Dorian said. He caught up his staff, moving with it as he went to the edge of the clearing, and Solas looked to Blackwall.

Blackwall, who looked as though a great many complicated equations were being addressed in his head, no doubt where a fair few of the figures amounted to Dorian Pavus, robed or unrobed. He looked up at Solas, and said, “He’s— I’m not imagining it, am I?”

“I expect you are,” Solas said. “But I imagine he’s imagining it _far_ more often.”

Blackwall cleared his throat, putting his hand over his mouth, rubbing over it, at the beard he’d grown to hide himself, so long ago. Was this what he amounted to, now, Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, supposed saviour? Drawing love connections between a Tevinter mage and a disgraced would-be Warden, so that they might enjoy that for a time before the world caved in?

“I’ve never…” Blackwall said, clearing his throat. “Er, I don’t suppose you…?”

“Are attracted to men?” Solas finished, arching an eyebrow. “No.”

“He’s too young.”

_You’re all young_, Solas wanted to say, but didn’t. _You all **feel** so much younger_.

“Young enough to be bold, and stupid,” Solas said. “Old enough to know what he wants, I would wager.”

“Solas?” asked Lavellan, and Solas turned to look at him, his hair still loose about his shoulders, looking relaxed and at ease. The Iron Bull had massaged his shoulders, no doubt – he was almost without tension, and he looked ready for bed, ready to dissolve into nothingness. That was for the best. “Are you ready?” 

“Yes, lethallin,” Solas murmured. “I’m ready.”

“Take the big tent,” Bull said, touching Solas’ shoulder. “Will he be asleep, when you’re done?”

“It may take a few hours,” Solas said. “If you need to sleep—”

“I can sleep out here,” Bull said, shrugging. “Don’t bother me.” He touched Solas’ arm, to Solas’ surprise, and looked at him seriously. “He gonna be okay?”

“Of course,” Solas lied, smiling in the gentlest way he could manage. He could do that, when it suited him: he could be comforting, paternal, a leader, a savior. Iron Bull responded well to such things, even if Solas was not the sort of leader he responded to best. “The Inquisitor is going to be fine.”

\--

Lavellan was asleep before his head hit the pillow, still sitting up, and Solas caught his head before it could fall, gently lowering him down. The Iron Bull might be recommended, no doubt, to any young mage wishing to introduce themselves to the Fade. Lavellan looked impossibly peaceful in sleep, ever more so without the vallaslin washed from his skin, and Solas laid slowly down beside him, on his side.

He looked at Lavellan’s face in profile, at the hard, well-defined shape of his nose and his brow, the cupid’s bow of his lips. He was handsome, some of the people in Skyhold said. Some said he was handsome – for an elf. It wasn’t something that people commented on continuously, wasn’t a factor that people brought up immediately. It was merely mentioned in an idle, offhand way, from time to time – a handsome face, but unremarkably so.

Solas closed his eyes.

Lavellan was floating in the void, in a sea of stars and green velvet. He was marvelling at the constellations embroidered on the fabric of the universe around them, stretching out in all directions, puckering it… Was this how he viewed the Astariums? The constellations were familiar – Lavellan knew every one of them, of course, and Solas had listened to him tell the stories of them to Iron Bull before.

“How do you do it?” Lavellan asked, with surprising clarity. His eyes were bright and clear, focused: as before, he seemed wide awake and comfortable in the Fade, practised in navigating the world it offered him. It was unusual, with non-mages, to exhibit such comfort in dreams, and Solas had previously attributed it to the Anchor, but now… “Look at the memories?”

“We don’t usually recall memories in their singular form, isolated to one event,” Solas said, laying his hand on the small of Lavellan’s back. In his dreams, he wore a green tunic and a leather jerkin – standard fare for any Dalish elf, and familiar, easily familiar, in its ancient way. It made his heart ache, though the fabrics, the silhouettes, were different: the colours remained the same. “They cross over with one another, tangling as threads in a pile. We reach for one colour, and we pull half a dozen threads at once: time must be taken to untangle them. Time… or magic. Think of the first time. The day that you got lost in the woods.”

Lavellan’s back was strong beneath the light layer of leather, and he leaned back slightly against Solas’ hand. In his dreams, the vallaslin showed on his face and disappeared from it in terms: the colour snaked over his cheekbones and his forehead, swirling outward in its leafy pattern, and then disappeared once more, as if it hadn’t yet decided to take its leave.

Solas saw the vision of the elven child, small and slim, curled up in the crook of a wolf’s shoulder, and yet never was the wolf fully visible. It was huge, gigantic, and Solas couldn’t see its face, its body beyond… All of the memories were like that. The Dread Wolf, always at the corner of Lavellan’s consciousness, ahead of him or behind him, never in full view.

And the things he said… Every one of them, prophetic. Every one of them, telling, in its own little way.

“_I killed you at the very beginning_,” said the Dread Wolf in a voice so unlike Solas’, so unlike any voice he had ever taken on in his life. And yet how right it was, how _correct_. The fur was the wrong colour – never had the spectral wolf Solas had portrayed in dreams and nightmares ever been so black, his fur so full of lustre. “_It will take you time to see how_.”

How could the vision be so wrong, and yet the words be so accurate? Was this some natural divination, a latent magic that existed in Lavellan before the Anchor?

“Have you ever seen his eyes?” Solas asked. The vision was bright before them: wolf’s eyes as big as they were, a sort of white crystalline colour, banded with copper at their very edges, and so tight was the focus upon them that he couldn’t see the wolf’s teeth, his jaws, his snout, his ears.

“Is it a spirit?” Lavellan asked softly.

“No,” Solas answered. “The wolf is… yours, he’s of you. Merely your own mind.”

“But it knows things,” Lavellan said. “It knows things it can’t possibly know. I thought it was just abstract, before, riddles, but… How could it know about the vallaslin?” His voice was stupendously calm, his expression entirely neutral. “How could it know?”

“You never suspected you had magical talent?” Solas asked. “Before the Anchor, I mean?”

“No,” Lavellan said. “I’ve been reading about what magic feels like, how mages describe it when they first come into understanding of their powers, the magic flowing through them, the world around them. I never felt anything like that, before the Anchor.”

“But you feel it now?” Solas asked. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But then, none of it was supposed to happen – only _he_ should have held the Anchor. Corypheus ought not have lived, and nor ought the key have been intercepted by this man, this _innocent_ young man—

“I feel it,” Lavellan said. “The… magic. You’ve seen me use the Anchor to kill demons, to kill… people.” Before them, Solas saw the flicker of green light, saw the image of the Mark of the Rift dragging hard at a trio of three bandits, choking, collapsing to the ground. Lavellan’s expression was one of nauseated disgust. The image faded away, and Lavellan closed his eyes. “Solas…”

“Mahanon?”

“Am I going to die?” His voice was so quiet, a whisper. The voices in the Fade weren’t meant to be louder or quieter than one another, not really – like the voices one heard in one’s own head, when one thought up voices, they were meant to be all one volume, altering only in tone or emphasis. It was only for mages, for more defined dreamers, that such things should be so keen, so plain.

“We all die, lethallin,” Solas said.

“Not all of us,” Lavellan replied, meeting his gaze, and Solas felt himself thrill, his blood ice cold in his veins. “What about Abelas? What about the other elves at the Temple of Mythal?” Solas felt himself relax, impossibly, and he didn’t let it show.

“What a way to enjoy immortality,” Solas said softly. “As a slave.” He slid his hand higher on Lavellan’s back, up between his shoulders, feeling the muscle beneath the leather, and Lavellan turned to look at him, his expression beseeching. Solas wished he knew what to offer. “The Anchor will kill you, eventually, I think. I cannot be sure, but… That mark is at odds with your body. It is trying to establish itself, to make itself apart of you, but ultimately, it is ancient, elven magic, made for ancient, magical elves. In its attempt to settle itself within you, it will destroy you.” Lavellan was silent, and Solas squeezed his shoulder. “But,” he said, “it will take time. Years.”

“How many?” Lavellan asked.

“I cannot say.”

“More than a Grey Warden has, before they hear their Calling? Less?”

It hit Solas like a punch to the gut, for such a comparison to be made, that _he_ should be as responsible for this as the Grey Wardens and their obscenity were for the deaths of their people, and yet, how fair a comparison was it? How could he object?

“At least a year,” Solas said.

“A year,” Lavellan whispered.

“At least,” Solas said. “It could easily be longer, lethallin, two years, three.”

“But not longer than that.”

Solas reached up, cupping Lavellan’s cheeks. It used to be so easy, in the time when all was right, when magic flowed through everyone, when all felt it the same, when there was no separation between mage and mundane – when there was only the People, all of them, together. Oh, not perfect, never perfect, but there had been such connection, when the world was whole, in the land of Elvhenan.

Now, he held Lavellan’s cheeks beneath his palms, saw the shimmer of the vallaslin as it ghosted on his skin, and here in the Fade, all flowed so easily about them. He could feel Lavellan’s feelings bubbling beneath his skin – fear, and grief, and horror, and pain.

He had destroyed his people, destroyed Arlathan, and here was Mahanon Lavellan – would he destroy him too? Would he destroy every earnest elf, aching for a glimpse of the people they ought have been, and let them crumble when the Veil was torn down?

The magic would kill them all. Oh, through memory, through magic, those that had fallen would rise anew, and he would bring them all back from the Void, repair the damage… But why was it that a seed had to be planted in the mulch made of dead things? Why was rebirth so dependent upon death?

Would Lavellan die before that day came? Would the Anchor drown him before the seas came crashing down?

Beside them flickered Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf as Lavellan imagined him: a great black beast with saltpeter eyes, huge paws, a tail, never in full focus, never entirely in one’s view. Just a flicker of a beast, a shadow passing them by.

Solas heard the echo of Lavellan’s voice, younger, more uncertain, saying, _“I don’t know what I want to be.”_

_“You do. You know what you want to be,” _whispered the Dread Wolf, dripping with humour. “_You want to be a hahren. You want to keep books and keep children with the same care and devotion. You want to be able to pluck stories from the pictures in the sky.”_ He laughed, and Solas saw teeth clashing against teeth, too close for comfort.

_“What’s funny about that?”_

_“Pick one: books, or children._ _Only one will last you forever.”_

_“What does that mean?”_

_“So many questions,” _the Dread Wolf said, laughing. “_They are not all that weighs you down. You will never be an old man, da’len, with wrinkles on your eyes and creases in your vallaslin. Not ever.”_

_“You mean I’ll die young?”_

The shadow faded like smoke. Lavellan’s eyes were closed, his cheeks as cold as ivory beneath Solas’ cupped hands, and Solas stared down at his face, at the pain in it, the agony that showed there.

“Don’t… Don’t tell Bull,” Lavellan said. “Or Dorian. Don’t tell any of them.”

“They’re your friends, lethallin,” Solas said softly. “You needn’t bear this burden alone.”

“Would you want to tell your friends you’re going to die?” Lavellan asked.

Solas was silent for a long moment, before he answered. “No.”

“Then don’t tell mine.”

Lavellan reached up, touching Solas’ hands on his cheeks, and Solas felt a sort of desperate _pull_ in his chest, an ache to be closer, to draw Lavellan toward him as he might have, were they both of Elvhenan – where their magic might have tangled together, their feelings, where they might have been…

Lavellan’s eyes were watering.

“Ir abelas, da’len,” Solas whispered.

_“Ir abelas, da’len,”_ echoed the phantom of the Dread Wolf, and Solas had to concentrate to keep from flinching. Lavellan didn’t seem to notice, his had dropping forward against Solas’ chest, and Solas wrapped his arms around the other man, held him tightly as he heard the memories echo over their heads.

_“What for?”_ asked the young Lavellan. _“For showing me the crystal city?”_

_“It made you cry.”_

_“That wasn’t why I was crying.”_

_“Why were you crying, then?”_

There was a pause before the young Lavellan answered, as if he was on the cusp of memory, as if he was trying to fill his lungs, steel his senses, before he let it out._ “I don’t remember.”_

_“Then I do not remember why I am sorry_,” said the Dread Wolf.

What did it mean? All these memories, all these dreams – what did it mean? What did it mean? A crystal city – crystal spires, glittering in the sun, Solas glimpsed them now from Lavellan’s own memory… _Arlathan_…

“Do you want to sleep,” Solas asked, “or shall I bring you with me when I wake?”

“Wake me,” Lavellan whispered. “Please. I don’t want to be here alone.”

_“You’re never alone,”_ came the Dread Wolf’s voice. _“No matter what you think._”

\--

Solas sat alone, later, beside the fire.

From one tent there was silence. Lavellan was asleep on the Iron Bull’s chest, and he would hold the Inquisitor all through the night, if it was what he needed. For all their play at master and slave, it was Iron Bull who served, most ardently.

Solas could hear the hissing whispers from the other tent, the muffled laughter. The conversation drifted out toward him, and Solas listened to it. He wanted to smile at it, to laugh, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.

“No, idiot, that goes _here_—”

“That so, lad? What, you don’t want it _here_?”

“_Fuck!”_ Dorian hissed, and after a slapping sound, Dorian let out a whimper.

“Aye,” Blackwall said. “That’ll teach you, won’t it? Want me to do it again?”

“Yes, please,” said Dorian, and Solas concentrated on the fire, and the crackling noise it made.

It was that sound which lulled him into the Fade, on his own this time. He didn’t wander. He only let himself lull, and rest, and was aware of the slumbering minds nearby – of Iron Bull’s mind, scarcely dreaming; of Lavellan’s entwined, a green glow on the edge of his awareness; of Blackwall, the same dreams in cycle after cycle; of Dorian, a swathe of colour wrapped around Blackwall’s glimmer.

All the bodies in the Fade were like that, once upon a time, all those colours. They were brighter than Dorian’s, made of a more complete spectrum – it was the way that magic manifested in the Fade, when magic flowed through your veins.

Solas stopped to examine Lavellan, the glow his energy left in sleep.

In the green were the barest glints of colour, like light catching in a prism. The signs, Solas supposed, of him inviting magic into his body, trying to feel it through what the Anchor offered him.

It might help, Solas thought.

If he did more magic, invited more of it into his body, changed it, the Anchor might not kill him quite so quickly. It wouldn’t be the same fight against his body – he would never be able to digest it entirely, not without being _ancient_, as Solas was, but… It might give him time. Another year. Another two years, even.

With the Dread Wolf dogging his steps.


	4. Chapter 4

Lavellan stumbled as he came down the stairs, and Bull caught him, lifting him right off the ground.

“Don’t carry me!” Lavellan protested, but the Iron Bull was already hoisting him up onto his shoulder – his shoulder, at least, and not the top of his head, where Sera sometimes perched. Lavellan had to grab hold of one horn to keep his balance, and he couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it as Bull walked down the hill. “Put me down!”

“Put you down!” Bull repeated. “Should I put him down?”

There was a chorus of “No!”s from everybody, and Lavellan laughed. He didn’t think he’d ever laughed with so much relief, never felt such _freedom_ in it… Corypheus was dead. The threat was gone.

They’d done it.

Bull dipped him, kissed him hard, and Lavellan laughed into his mouth as he kissed him back, letting Bull carry him down the mountainside.

\--

The forest stretched out on every side, green, eternal. Lavellan walked with no weapon on his back or in his hands, and he wore clothes he’d never worn before, woven from the leaves and flowers themselves, fitting so snugly against his body that tailored silks could never compare for comfort or silhouette.

He knew where he was going.

The path sprouted flowers in his wake, coming out from him in ripples across the forest floor, until it was a sea of new blooms: violets and bluebells, cowslips and snowdrops, forget-me-nots and oversized daisies, all forming a new carpet. This forest had been dead but hours ago, overrun by shemlen and untended by those that would love it, that would push it to bear fruit…

“_Careful_,” said the Dread Wolf.

“Careful?” Lavellan repeated, reaching out and watching blackberries grow and ripen beneath the shadow of his outstretched palm. “Why?”

“_You aren’t alone,_” the Dread Wolf said, breathing hot on his neck, and Lavellan whipped around on his feet.

Silence reigned.

The forest was entirely empty, but for Lavellan himself.

\--

“Your bedroom finally has a ceiling,” Lavellan said pleasantly as Iron Bull strode into his quarters, not even bothering to knock. Not that Lavellan expected him to, of course – it was more than a pleasure to have Iron Bull with him, particularly as the Qunari came up behind him at his desk, leaning to brush his lips over the top of Lavellan’s head. “Are you pleased?”

“Nah, pissed off,” Iron Bull said. “Ruined my view.”

“Oh, no,” Lavellan said, turning in his chair and pouting in faux sympathy. “Are you going to have to open the _door_ to look outside now?”

“Yeah,” Iron Bull said, pouting back, and Lavellan laughed, taking up Bull’s hand and interlinking their fingers.

“Well, you’ll just have to suffer, I’m afraid,” Lavellan murmured. “That, or move to different quarters entirely.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bull asked. “And what can you offer me that’s better than what I had, huh?”

“Well, _this_ room has balconies,” Lavellan murmured.

Bull’s smile became just a little smaller, more subtle. Not less happy, merely that it was more intimate, and the look in his eye softened immeasurably as he leaned in, curling his fingers in Lavellan’s hair.

“But where would _you_ sleep?” he asked, and then he kissed Lavellan. It was sweet, sweet and gentle and soft, and Lavellan sighed as he leaned into it. “No, kadan. I’d like that, really. If you wanted it.”

“I want it,” Lavellan murmured, squeezing Bull’s hand and setting his quill aside. He was nearly finished with his correspondence, in any case – it was a letter to the King of Ferelden’s office, discussing terms for which rifts he would move to repair first, which were of the most crucial importance. “So much to do.”

“Big thing’s been done though,” Bull murmured, tugging Lavellan to his feet, and Lavellan allowed himself to be brought over to the bed and pushed onto his belly. Bull straddled his arse to begin massaging him through the fabric of his shirt, and Lavellan groaned as Bull went for the biggest knots of tension in his back, pressing _hard_. “You okay?”

What would Bull do, when Lavellan died? Grieve? Try his best to forget? Lavellan knew he ought tell him, but he couldn’t bear to, couldn’t _do_ that, not if Bull would focus on it, would try so hard to give Lavellan what he needed…

“Just tired,” Lavellan murmured. He thought of the death sentence buried in his hand, thought of Solas’ apologies, and he turned his head into the pillows, trying to relax. “There are whisperings in the nobility, you know. Already some of the Fereldan nobility want the Inquisition disbanded, and as soon as the Divine is elected, the Chantry will begin asking in that direction, too.”

And what would happen, if Lavellan died, before the Inquisition was disbanded? What chaos would it be thrown into, everyone scrambling for the top, everyone scrambling, did they need it? Did they need it? It was too much power, and yet they needed it, for now, so he needed to close the rifts, as soon as possible, _now_… He had been closing some, but not fast enough—

“So?” Bull asked, sliding his fingers down the length of Lavellan’s spine and making him hiss. “Didn’t need their permission to start.”

“I don’t know that the Inquisition _needs_ to exist once the rifts are dealt with,” Lavellan mumbled. “What if we end up like the Chantry, or the Templars? A big organisation, corrupted by _Andruil’s teeth, Bull!”_ Lavellan dissolved into moans, and Bull laughed at him, not coming away from that spot until he had bled every bit of tension from that part of Lavellan’s back, thumbing hard over the knotted muscle there until it untangled in an irresistibly warm spread of syrupy heat.

“Let’s stop talking about politics,” Bull suggested, and Lavellan grumbled out something incoherent as Bull’s fingers moved lower, rubbing circles on his lower back. “Okay… Let’s stop talking.”

Lavellan obeyed.

It was always easy, with Bull.

\--

“No sign of Solas?” Bull asked as they made their way down the stairs a few hours later, after a well-deserved nap, and Lavellan shook his head, sighing.

“Nearly a month since he disappeared,” Lavellan said as they descended into the main hall, making their way toward the table. He sat beside Dorian, who barely noticed him _or_ Bull, engaged as he was in a very passionate argument with Blackwall, who looked the most content Lavellan had ever seen him, and was looking at Dorian as though he were a personal gift from the Creators. “Leliana has been looking for him, but none of her scouts have seen hide nor hare. I’m worried something’s happened to him.”

“He can look after himself,” Bull said, shrugging his shoulders. “He coulda just left, you know. His job was done – he wanted to help you close the Rift, but that was kinda it, right?”

“Mmm,” Lavellan hummed, and turned to his meal.

\--

Cassandra was made Divine, and left for Val Royeaux.

Vivienne was next to leave, committed to remaking the Circle of Magi, but Fiona was in the process of founding the College of Enchanters, and Lavellan knew already that the two organisations would clash, but… It was for the best, perhaps.

Dorian was soon to return to Tevinter. Blackwall was going to go with him – personal guard to the Altus, he had informed Lavellan with a mock bow, but Lavellan was glad. Dorian was homesick, Lavellan knew, but with Blackwall, he wouldn’t be made sick to be home. He’d bolster Dorian against the worst of things, and Blackwall himself… He seemed happy, with Dorian. It seemed genuine.

Varric was called back to Kirkwall. Lavellan was honestly surprised it took him as long as it did to return, but it still ached when he _did_ go, when Lavellan first thought to himself of speaking with Varric, then realised he couldn’t any longer.

People left Skyhold. Other people joined them. Cullen, Leliana, Josephine: they were staples, the core of the Inquisition; Sera wanted to stay; Cole said he couldn’t leave yet, for reasons he couldn’t explain; Bull and the Chargers… They would go where Lavellan did. Bull had already made it clear.

There was a sort of tension in Lavellan’s chest, as if he waiting for something, something horrible or something wonderful, either way, something _big_. The dreams came every night, and they were different: in the dreams, he felt comfortable and at ease, moving slowly and without care, without worry. He and the Dread Wolf were _equals_, if the Dread Wolf spoke at all, but it was all subtly wrong, subtly incomplete…

And the air crackled with something Lavellan couldn’t describe.

\--

There was a storm on the air on the night Solas returned.

He walked into the fortress via the bridge, clutching tightly at his staff and using it to support his own weight, because he stumbled with exhaustion. When he was all but carried by two young guards into the main hall of Skyhold, he was soaked to his skin, breathing heavily, and Lavellan rushed to catch him before he fell forward.

“Inquisitor,” Solas said, dazed and seeming out of it, and Lavellan shouted for Dorian to come down from the upper part of the library as he drew Solas into the rotunda, where his blankets, beside the wide sofa, were still waiting for him. It had been months, but Lavellan had been so hopeful, and for good reason, it seems.

“Maker, man, what have you been _doing_?” Dorian demanded as he caught hold of Solas’ shoulder, magic making the moisture steam away from Solas’ clothing, and Solas laughed breathlessly, dazedly, as though the storm outside had made him drunk.

“Magic,” he said, and Lavellan did as Dorian told him to. He could be remarkably good in a crisis, could Dorian: he brought the lyrium potion to Solas’ lips, only a little of it, and Solas swallowed, but then coughed, refusing anymore than a mouthful. His eyes refocused, at least, and he let Dorian support him over to the sofa, but his gaze remained focused on Lavellan.

“Where were you?” Lavellan asked as he brought water up to Solas’ mouth, and Solas drank, his had resting heavily on the sofa’s back. Dorian perched on the arm, his hand loosely encircling Solas’ wrist to check his pulse.

“I had to…” Solas said, mumbling the words, his eyes falling half-closed. “There were things I had to do. My apologies, if you thought I had abandoned you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t have,” Lavellan said softly, and Solas laughed again, his head lolling.

“I was meant to,” Solas mumbled, and Lavellan frowned, but then he went on, “I was meant to… return earlier, but there were difficulties, I… Rest. I must rest.”

It wasn’t right, seeing Solas like this. He looked weak, and exhausted, sprawling awkwardly on the sofa, and Lavellan moved to unclasp the buckles on the boots he was wearing, no doubt to protect him from the snow. Dorian moved with him, untying the neckerchief from around his neck and pulling off his belt, so that Solas was left only in the fabric of his robes, with no hard leather digging into him.

“Will you tell Leliana and Josephine that he’s back?” Lavellan asked, and Dorian nodded, brushing Lavellan’s shoulder in a comforting gesture as he left the room. Lavellan pulled a blanket over Solas’ body, letting him lie down properly, and Solas reached for him, his fingers clumsily landing against Lavellan’s chest and then seeking out the beat of his heart through his clothes. Solas’ palm pressed tight against the fabric, and then he exhaled, his eyes still closed.

Only then did he relax, his head falling onto the pillow, and Lavellan caught his hand as it went slack, laying it gently beside the other elf on the sofa.

Solas slept like the dead the first two days – that is to say, it seemed only Dorian could rouse him. Dorian only did so when Solas needed to eat something, and although he couldn’t get Solas to take any more lyrium, he would sip at other restoratives, at other tonics.

“Magical exhaustion?” Lavellan asked, and Dorian shrugged his shoulders.

“He’s… I don’t know that I’d call him a hedge mage, per se,” Dorian murmured, “no matter what he says he is, but the magic he does is so different to anything I know, Inquisitor. I couldn’t say precisely what it is he’s been doing, only that he seems to be tired now.”

“Thank you,” Lavellan murmured.

On the third day, Solas was on his feet, the colour returned to his face, and he looked… better. Lavellan felt himself breathe a sigh of relief to see him moving around the rotunda, tidying things into their places, and when Solas turned to look at him, he smiled, putting out his hands.

Lavellan hugged him easily, feeling Solas pat his back before he drew back.

“My apologies,” he said, “if I caused you any distress.”

“You’re fully recovered?” Lavellan asked.

“Well enough to go with you when you start your grand tour of Ferelden three days hence,” Solas said quietly. “If you would have me.”

“Of course,” Lavellan said, sitting down when Solas gestured for him to take a seat, and Solas sank into his seat, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. He laid his chin on his hand, and Lavellan took him in, searching for the signs of tiredness from the nights before, but they were mostly gone. “Where were you?”

“I had to search for any remnants of the artefact,” Solas said quietly. “If even a fragment of it, even a ghost, remained…” Solas trailed off, shaking his head. “And then I was researching. I spent many weeks in the Fade, searching… I know not the precise origin of the Anchor in your hand, nor do I believe it might be removed, not by me. But…” Solas’ fingers, graceful and long, tapped a slow rhythm on the edge of his seat, and when he looked to Lavellan’s face, their eyes locking, it was as if for a moment they were the only two men in the universe, so concentrated was Solas, so concentrated was Lavellan himself. Everything else seemed to momentarily bleed away as Lavellan held his breath. “I believe if you can harness more of the Anchor’s magic, you might digest it, make it more entirely a part of you.”

Lavellan’s tongue felt too big for his mouth, and he was aware of its tip against the back of his teeth before he steeled himself and asked, “Why? What would that do?”

“If my research is correct,” Solas said, “prolong your life.”

Lavellan inhaled.

“I know not by how much,” Solas said quickly. “But… but if the Anchor is a part of you, and not something at odds with the rest of you, it ought not harm you so quickly. Your fate, I fear, is inevitable, but I might manage years, a decade, even, instead of—”

Lavellan grasped tightly at Solas’ hand, squeezing tightly, and Solas clasped his hand between his own, his grip gentle. “Thank you,” he whispered. No other words would come. Solas didn’t break the silence, just kept hold of Lavellan’s hands for a few moments.

“The dreams?” he asked.

“They’re different, now.”

“Is the Dread Wolf still in them?”

“Yes,” Lavellan murmured. “But I never glimpse him anymore. I hear his voice, but I don’t even see his shadow, his silhouette. And me, in the dreams, I’m… different.”

“I see,” Solas said, and squeezed his hand. “I cannot promise all will be well. But I— I care for you, lethallin. I will do as I can to help you.”

\--

“I’m glad he’s coming with us,” Bull murmured in bed that night, as Lavellan laid on his chest, stroking absent circles on the sides of the Qunari’s shoulders, his arms, up and down the grey skin. “He’s gonna teach you magic?”

“Mmm,” Lavellan hummed. “Through the Mark. It will improve my control, apparently.”

“Good,” Bull said. He didn’t even consider, no doubt, that Lavellan was lying – why would he consider that? Lavellan felt guilt shift painfully in his stomach, and he shifted to lie his head on Bull’s breast, feeling the plush flesh of Bull’s belly underneath him.

“You’re my favourite pillow,” he said.

“Careful,” Bull murmured, “or I’ll be your blanket, kadan, and _crush_ you.”

“With your tits or your arse?” Lavellan asked, and when Bull’s hand cracked down on his backside, he laughed despite the pain. “Ar lath ma, you big _idiot_.”

“Kadan,” Bull murmured, hauling him into a kiss, even as he rolled them over.

\--

Alone in his bed, Solas stared into the darkness, and wondered if he had gone entirely, completely mad.

Only time would tell.


	5. Chapter 5

“Keep your eyes closed,” Solas murmured in Lavellan’s ear, and Lavellan obeyed, his eyes closed, his hands laid on his bent knees. He was cross-legged, his back straight, and he was focusing very carefully on the camp around him. Solas had brought him into the camp after spinning him around a few times in the woods, on a different path to the one he’d come in on, and settled him before the fire. “What direction are you facing?”

“North-west,” Lavellan answered. “The smith is off to the left of my shoulder: I can hear Scout Landover at the tanning stand.”

“How do you know it’s Scout Landover?” Solas asked softly.

“He has a stiffness on his left side, so you can hear the difference in the clink of his belt when he moves compared to any of the other scouts.”

Solas laughed. It was a rich sound, genuine and full of humour, and Lavellan heard him turn away slightly.

“What?” asked Bull from the corner of the camp: he was sitting down beside Sera, and the two of them were eating. He could hear the clinks of their food trays, and he could hear the tap of Sera’s feet on the earth, even though Solas had told them to be quiet. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m going to have to plug his ears,” Solas said, and Lavellan turned around, his eyes opening, affronted.

“What? Why?”

“_Because_, lethallin,” Solas said, looking at him like he was trying to stop himself from bursting out laughing, his eyes glittering with indulgence, “you have a hunter’s keen ear. Even most elves couldn’t make such careful sense of the world about them with their hearing alone.”

“Don’t see why it’s so important,” Sera said. “Why can’t he just use his ears?”

“Because I want him to develop his _other_ senses.”

“What, like his nose?” Sera demanded.

“Sera,” Solas said, even as he gestured for Lavellan to get to his feet. “If I were to blindfold you and deafen your ears—”

“I wouldn’t let you do that, _weirdy_.”

“— then I have no doubt that I could still put a bow in your hands and watch you hit the centre of every target I indicated.”

“Well, duh,” Sera said.

“That is the sense I want for the Inquisitor to develop,” Solas said, and Sera made a face. Lavellan smiled slightly as he saw the way Bull was staring at her, and then looked to Solas.

“I’m going to use magic for this,” Solas murmured. “It will feel… uncomfortable.”

“You may as well do my nose as well,” Lavellan muttered.

Solas’ brow furrowed. “Why, what can you tell from your nose?”

“Where Bull is. Where Scout Johannsen is. Where the tanning table is, and the requisitions table, and the latrines, and upwind of us there’s a herd of halla bedding down for—”

“Alright,” Solas said, spreading his hands.

“Sorry,” Lavellan said.

“Don’t be,” Solas murmured, and laid his hands on Lavellan’s cheeks.

\--

Lavellan was sitting cross-legged before the fire. He could feel its flickering warmth on his skin, against his face, warm on his cheeks, and he could feel the slight breeze. Blackness stretched out before him, even though his eyes were open, because Solas had blinded his eyes; there was nothingness coming to his ears, as though they’d been stuffed with cotton wool; he couldn’t even _smell_ the smoke from the fire, or the other elements around the camp.

When Solas’ voice came, it was gently pressed into his mind, like a note slipped beneath a bedroom door: “_There. What direction are you facing?”_

“South, I think,” Lavellan said softly. “I can feel the wind in my hair, and it was blowing south-westerly, before, so…" There was a thunk in the ground off to his right, one that he could feel in the dirt. “Bull just dropped his axe.”

“_You’re going to be the death of me,_” Solas said, and pulled him to his feet.

\--

“Am I beside the fire?” Lavellan asked. He was sitting cross-legged, but beyond vaguely feeling the position of his own body, as if through a veil of water, he couldn’t really feel anything, his skin numb.

“_No_,” Solas answered, tone wry. “_As you cannot feel it, I thought it best to remove you from its proximity. Why, are you cold?”_

Lavellan thought for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“**_Good_**,” Solas said. _“Then we can begin.”_

\--

“_Concentrate on my voice,”_ Solas said, and Lavellan did. It didn’t sound the same as it would when heard through his ears: it lacked the differences in volume that a voice in his head should have, as if it was coming from Lavellan himself, and yet Lavellan knew that it wasn’t coming from him. It was subtly different, somehow, as if it was on a thread… He exhaled, trying to reach for that thread, to _grab_ at it. Surely, he could hear where Solas was? _“Where am I?”_

“To… to my left,” Lavellan said. “I think. In front of me, a bit.”

“_Good_,” Solas said. “_Can you feel anything else?”_

“Not really. I only know where you are because I have your voice to go by.”

“_Put your palm face up, the one marked with the Anchor,” _Solas instructed, feeling as though he were coming closer, and Lavellan obeyed. He could feel the _Mark_, that much was true – he could feel its strange, crystalline weight in his skin, the slight coldness of it. He tried to level out his breathing, feeling the rhythm that pulsed always through the Mark – it was subtle, like the flow of a river, but it was always there, a constant beat. “_Good_,” Solas said. “_Try to conjure a spark.”_

_“_I can’t sustain a flame without fuel,” Lavellan said.

“_I’m not asking you to, lethallin. Just conjure a spark, as though you were lighting a brazier.”_

Lavellan had known, before, what it felt like to conjure a spark. It was a miniscule pull on the Anchor and a little _flicker_ of light and heat, much like it felt to use a pair of flints. This time, the sensation was magnified beyond expectation, and he hissed out a noise.

“_Did it hurt?”_

“No.” It didn’t hurt. But there was more than heat in it – there was something in it, warm, flickering, a sort of _sink_ of energy that he could feel from the air around his hand. “It’s like it’s… a vacuum, a pull, it—”

“_That’s the flame drawing in air,”_ Solas explained. “_Searching for fuel. Now that you know what it feels like, search for more._”

“For more?” Lavellan repeated, but Solas didn’t explain any further. He made the spark flicker again, feeling it in his hand: the tug from the Anchor as energy left it, but then the tug _back_ that he could feel, not on his skin, but on something else – his energy? His aura? The warmth he felt from it didn’t really touch his skin, but went… deeper. Or perhaps, more shallowly. It was hard to describe.

He tried to feel out the camp around him. It felt awkward, like trying to find the detail in a painting with his eyes closed, but then it was as though something… _clicked_. He inhaled sharply, and he reached for the sink of energy he felt – off to the far right. That was the biggest of them, and he tried to estimate the size, perhaps the size of his head? That big? No, bigger… But no, there were others, too, smaller sinks, those were the braziers. There, if that was the fire, then he was facing north-west again, because then there were the braziers by the tents, by the requisition table, by the weapons table…

And there was…

Lavellan stood to his feet.

“_Lethallin_.”

“No, no, let me,” Lavellan murmured, taking a slow step forward. He felt like he was about to fall over, not because he was actually dizzy, but because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell if he _was_ dizzy, but the ground was even under his feet. Flat. The fire, off to that side, which meant he was walking toward Bull and Sera, if they hadn’t moved. He spread his hands, trying to reach out, and he felt a sudden shift off to the side, something rushing past him, a burst of bright energy, not like the flame at all, and not like the comforting energy of Solas behind him, either, tinted green— “I’m not going to hurt you, Sera.”

There was another spread of energy in front of him, bigger than Sera’s was. Now that he’d noticed it, it was all over, and he tried to see it in his mind’s eye, see the silhouette… Yes. Bull. Broad-shouldered, huge, and he was sitting straight-backed, looking straight at Lavellan, his hands in his lap.

“Hi, Bull,” Lavellan said as he put out his hand, and he touched Bull’s chest. He felt a slight vibration under the skin, Bull talking, and he said, “Can’t hear you.”

He tried to find the spark of flame, the—

“_Ah_,” he murmured, and he touched the rune in the brace over his shoulder, feeling it catch under his fingers. It was the same energy, but it was as though it had been held in glass – it didn’t _pull_ from the air about it, but instead cycled in on itself. Is this what fire would feel like, if it somehow had fuel in a jar? “Solas, this doesn’t have the same sink as the actual fire, but it feels the same.”

Solas’ hand touched the centre of his back, and it all rushed back to him at once: his hearing came back to him with a _pop_ in his ears, and he was looking directly at the Bull’s face, who was looking up at him with a kind of open-mouthed awe parting his lips, his eye wide.

“Very good,” Solas murmured, patting his shoulder. “Very good indeed.”

\--

In the centre of the old forest, Lavellan stood very, very still. He could hear the wind through the trees, the rustle of the leaves; he could feel the breeze on the back of his neck, eking beneath his armour; he could smell the mulch of autumn taking over, leaves left damp and beginning to rot on the forest floor.

He reached out further.

He felt the white brightness of the halla, a herd of a dozen of them, dancing through the trees; he could feel the smaller energy of a pair of woodpeckers, and smaller still could he feel the worms, the spiders, the beetles…

A huge sink of energy made itself known, directly behind him. It was remarkable in that it felt like nothing at all: it didn’t feel like life, and nor did it feel like the peculiar sink that _death_ felt like. He was learning to distinguish corpses from trees and plants, and this didn’t feel like either, but nor did it feel like an animal.

“What?” Lavellan asked the Dread Wolf. “No witty commentary?”

_“You will see,_” it said.

\--

The rain was falling outside.

Lavellan was tired: they’d repaired four rifts today, on top of Solas drilling him on what seemed like half a dozen elements, and the quiet ache in his bones, Solas had informed him, was what mana depletion felt like.

“But I don’t _have_ mana,” Lavellan had said.

“You didn’t,” Solas had corrected. “Rest.”

His thighs were spread wide over the Iron Bull’s lap, his palms braced on the qunari’s chest, and Bull was looking up at him, his head rested on the ground. Lavellan was concentrating not on the Iron Bull – _the white thrum beneath his skin, the tint to it that Lavellan was beginning to recognise as qunari, the patterns in the energy that revealed where his blood flowed, where his heart rested, and in the core the hard bones – _but on the rain outside, feeling the drops come down against the canvas of their tent. It was as though he could feel each one of them, individually, feeling the drop of the water and the tiny expansion it made as it hit the fabric.

“Hey, kadan,” Bull said, and Lavellan looked down at him, feeling himself smile.

“Yes?”

“What do you think it looks like to your new magic sense when you make me come?”

Lavellan laughed, breathlessly, and he leaned in closer, catching the Bull’s mouth under his own. “Let’s find out,” he murmured against his chin as he crawled down his body, and went for the fastenings on his trousers.

\--

“Sex!” Lavellan said to Solas that morning. Solas, to his credit, did not flinch, his expression unchanging as he politely set his jerkin aside, no longer focusing on cleaning it or polishing its clasps.

“Have you just discovered it?” Solas asked. “It’s quite a common phenomenon.”

“It _feels_…” Lavellan said, spreading his hands, and he tried to find the words to describe what it was he meant, what he wanted to explain, to _ask_ about. Last night, it had been sublime, feeling Bull arch to meet him, feeling his energy _reach_ for Lavellan’s – that wasn’t the sex, but the connection between them, he was fairly sure, but the sex _itself_… “There’s an energy in it. It makes energy, it’s… it’s _different_ to…”

“You knew sex to be an important component to some magical rituals,” Solas said patiently, one eyebrow arched. “This surprises you?”

“But I didn’t know how it _felt!”_

“May it be only the first of your many discoveries,” said Solas, patting his shoulder, and Lavellan laughed breathlessly as he fell to sit beside the other man. “Between two mages, it is different again.”

“It couldn’t possibly be better,” Lavellan said, and felt himself smile as he sighed in satisfaction. Solas watched him for a long, silent moment, and then looked back to his armour.

\--

The Inquisitor was… different. It had been nearly two months now since Solas had come back to Skyhold, and they’d set out on this tour of every wet, ugly place in Ferelden, repairing small rifts that were still open and needed to be repaired. They were cycling through half the kingdom before going back to Orlais, taking care of the ones that were closest to big groups of people, and then they’d be going back for the really isolated ones. It was crazy, Bull thought, but Orlais and Ferelden had actually _argued_ over where Lavellan went first, but…

Shit, yeah. This was politics.

Lavellan was good, though. Different, but in a good way. More energy, even more curious than before, always reading, and watching him do his magic, it was _wild_. There was something different in the way that Lavellan and Solas did it than any other mage that Bull had seen before.

He’d never been comfortable with magic, not really, and especially not with demons, which were just… _creepy_, but— There were no demons here. No spirits. For the most part, it was Lavellan trying the same thing twenty-four times in a row while Solas shouted “Wrong! Again!”, and honestly, after sessions like that, he was _very_ frustrated, and _very_ fun for the Bull to _un_frustrate.

Not always, of course. A lot of the time, he was actually more relaxed – chill and quiet and full of wonder, like he was seeing everything around him for the first time ever. He marvelled at the sky and the trees and leaves and statues, _touched_ things – even normal things, like a chisel or a plate or a rock in the woods – with a new reverence.

It made him happy.

Tired, sure, and a little slower to think things through when he had new things to take in, but _happy_, and that was good enough for Bull.

“Solas,” Lavellan called as they came to the crest of a rock. There had been a bridge here, once upon a time, Bull could see – the fragments of wood were scattered in the gully, the great pieces of wood. “Can you repair this?”

“No,” Solas said. “You can.”

“I don’t know how!”

Solas stepped up the rock, and the Iron Bull stepped back slightly to allow him past. His staff was strapped to his back, which left his hands free as he came up behind Lavellan, and this, this was maybe… a problem.

Lavellan trusted Solas. The Iron Bull knew that – Lavellan trusted Solas like he trusted _Bull_, even if the contexts weren’t exactly the same, and that was a lot of trust to put in somebody, a lot. Bull knew that if Solas told Lavellan to jump off a bridge, Lavellan might ask a question, but if Solas told him to trust him, he would.

And before? Before, that had suited the Bull.

It should have suited him now, given that Solas was Lavellan’s teacher, now, given that Solas had basically taken Lavellan on as a little hedge mage apprentice, teaching him how to use that Anchor of his for _normal_ magic, not just the stuff he’d done before, but… Solas stepped up behind Lavellan and put one hand on his waist and the other up on the side of his neck, didn’t even _hesitate_ to check if it was okay to touch, and Lavellan didn’t flinch. He was ready for it, for Solas to touch him, and Solas expected him to be ready to be touched.

It wasn’t a big thing, in itself.

He was sure there were other mages in the world that touched each other to each one another magic. But he doubted that they touched each other like Solas touched Lavellan: his fingers curled in against Lavellan’s waist, holding the crest of his hip, his other hand splayed on his neck and his thumb touched against the sensitive spot on the back of Lavellan’s neck that always made him drop on his belly like a bitch when he and Bull were in bed together, his chest was up against Lavellan’s back, close enough that he could probably feel Solas’ breath on his ear.

“You are merely putting back to order what was destroyed,” Solas was murmuring, his low voice carrying on the wind. “The shattered pieces know what it was to be a bridge: return them to as they ought be."

Lavellan’s hands glowed green as he gathered energy up in them, and Bull could feel the tell-tale tingle of magic on the air as he inhaled, drawing the wood up from wherever it had fallen. It stacked together like he’d seen Solas do a dozen times before, repairing the broken bridge, nails sliding back into their old places…

Bull caught a glimpse of the way Solas looked at Lavellan as he drew his hands away. It was subtle – the elf was always cagey, always subtle, in his expressions, but he saw the look in his eyes, the gleam there.

It was the trust that got in the way, here.

Because Lavellan turned back to Solas, _smiled_, and didn’t clock the look in Solas’ eyes at all.

\--

The Iron Bull kept an eye on it, the next few weeks.

Solas didn’t turn to look at them, when he saw Bull and Lavellan together, when Bull was massaging his shoulders or brushing his hair, when Lavellan was rubbing balm into his horns or massaging his bad leg. He didn’t complain about Lavellan and Bull sleeping together, didn’t comment on how they had sex, didn’t bring it up at all.

He didn’t watch inappropriately. He didn’t look angry, or pissed off, or jealous. There was no secret implication in the way he talked about Bull to Sera or the scouts, and there was no funniness in the way he talked to Bull himself.

But when he looked at Lavellan?

It hadn’t been like this, before. Bull was certain that this was new. There had been ghosts of it, maybe, little pushes in that direction, but this little beast was growing from nothingness into something more fully formed. Solas watched Lavellan when he did his stretching exercises, hair still damp from whatever freezing creek the crazy elf had happily bathed in, watched the way the moisture glistened on the lithe muscle and shone on the scars; his ears perked up when Lavellan groaned at the way Bull touched his back or at a particularly good piece of food; he touched him more often. His fingers brushed Lavellan’s shoulder, his arm, his hands, as he passed him by. He sat closer to him than he did before. And when the tutelage was going, shit, then the touching _really_ went overboard – it was like he was trying to subtly press his whole body to Lavellan’s while he had the excuse, and Lavellan never even looked _uncertain_ about it.

“How’s it feel, getting closer to Solas?” the Iron Bull asked one night, watching Lavellan do a complicated elvish magical exercise that involved untangling magical threads on the air. They closed softly golden as he worked, and despite the tension, the anxiety, Bull could feel in his chest and tangling in his gut, there was something calming about their glow, about Lavellan’s painstaking work to pull them apart.

“I’m very grateful,” Lavellan said quietly, not looking away from his game. “He didn’t have to stay, to help me get a better control of the Anchor. It means a great deal to me. He’s taught me so much, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be able to repay him.”

There was no secret fear in the words, no uncertainty. This was what he and Lavellan had together: easy, frank talk, even about the hard stuff, the complicated stuff, but this wasn’t complicated to Lavellan, was it? He was a smart guy. _Creepy_ smart, sometimes, but with a kindness that made it all okay…

“You think he’s hot?”

Lavellan laughed: he thought he was silly. “Solas? No, not really. Maybe if he had hair and a different attitude. There was a keeper I met at Arlathvhen – that’s a meeting of the Dalish clans – not the last one, but the one before, I was only about twenty, that he reminds me of, sometimes. He died during the Blight, he was… He was also bald, but that’s not what makes me think of them as similar, in my head. He was old, very old, he did this blood magic that… It doesn’t matter. He was condescending the way that Solas is sometimes. He knew better than you did because, I guess, he was so old; Solas can be like that, after all the time he’s spent in the Fade.

“I trust him. I’d trust him with my life, but I don’t think, even if he was attracted to men, I could be attracted to him like that. He’s more like a keeper to me, a hahren, my elder. I know he’s not that old, but he has the same energy, the same…” Lavellan shrugged his shoulders. “Authority, I suppose.”

“I’m older than you,” Bull pointed out. “And, uh, _pretty_ authoritative, if I say so myself, kadan.”

“You’re older than me by _two years_,” Lavellan scoffed, making a pretty web of threads untangle with one clever shift of his fingers. “And your authority over me is a little bit different from a hahren’s.”

“What would you do if he _was_ attracted to you?” Bull asked.

“Solas?”

“Mm.”

He saw the tension in Lavellan’s shoulders, the press of his lips together, the furrow of his brow. It wasn’t disgust, but discomfort, uncertainty. The game of threads disappeared from the air, and he turned around to look at Bull, and his face… Shit, Bull loved that face. Even with all the vallaslin scrubbed away – maybe especially, if they were what Solas had said they were.

“I don’t think I’d like that,” Lavellan said, in a very quiet voice, and Bull put out his arms. Lavellan moved closer, falling against Bull’s chest like a dead weight, pressing his cheek against Bull’s skin, his nose against his neck. He was breathing very slowly, and Bull stroked up his back, as gentle as he knew how. “He wouldn’t hurt me. Do you think that he really…?”

“Didn’t say it to hurt you.”

“No,” Lavellan said. “I didn’t think you did. I know you’re not the jealous sort.” Bull wished, not for the first time, that he could see exactly what Lavellan was thinking. He could hear him breathing, feel his heartbeat, how warm he was, how _tightly_ he was clutching at him, but… “It’s important. That I let him teach me.”

“You completely comfortable with him, though?” Bull asked, touching Lavellan’s hair. “You could have more teachers. The Circle, the College—”

“It has to be him,” Lavellan said.

“Why?”

Lavellan was silent for a moment, and Bull felt the worry burn in his chest, but then he said, “You can’t really go back to learning spells the way that Circles teach them, once you start as a hedge mage. There’s different schools of magic, but the structure is all wrong – apostates, they learn by feeling stuff first, and then manipulating it. Circle mages, they learn the structure, the theory, and then they do rigorous spells. It’s not that it’s less powerful, it’s just more rigid. Once you learn outside of it, you can’t really go and learn to be that rigid very easily. It’s why they take mages so young. There are other apostates, but… I don’t trust anyone like I trust Solas, and I know he’s more aware of the Anchor, if it might hurt me, if I’m tired because of it.”

“I get you,” Bull murmured. “Love you, vhenan.”

“Kadan,” Lavellan whispered, and gripped at Bull so tightly Bull thought he’d bruise.

“You seem tense. Something you’re not telling me?”

“That depends,” Lavellan said, looking up and smiling at Bull in a tired way, sighing. “You want to hear about Gorael’s Third Precept as it pertains to energy manipulation within an element-based field?”

“You never wish you could turn that big elf brain of yours off?”

“All the time,” Lavellan murmured, and his smile grew a little bit wider, his fingers sliding slowly over Bull’s sternum. “Funnily enough, I’ve only ever been able to find one off switch.”

“Oh, _I_ know which one you mean,” Bull murmured, and gently pushed Lavellan back onto the bedroll.

\--

_“There he is,”_ said the Dread Wolf, and Lavellan came to the crest of the hill, looking down the bank. The Dread Wolf was at his shoulder, great black sink of feeling that it was, and he might as well have been wearing the thing as a cowl, it was so close behind him.

Far below them, alone, was Solas. As Lavellan watched, he stood from where he had been seated, and began to move… It was slow, at first. Slow, as though he was trying to work out the steps to a process long before forgotten, as he picked up his rhythm. One step forward, one long striding step, and then three smaller steps to the side, back…

It started as a glow on the field, a sort of shimmer that settled on the air like the gleam of a magical field, but then it became a little more defined, separating into smaller pieces, smaller lights that moved one way, then the next… Silhouettes, auras of people, first a few of them in half-appearing, and then dozens, and then they more solid, more complete, so much so that Lavellan could see the clothes they wore, their suits, their dresses, that seemed to have been made of flowers and leaves—

Dancing.

The music that began to float up from the Fade-ground itself was impossibly haunting, making Lavellan think of some lullaby he hadn’t realized he’d forgotten until now: the sound rose to meet his ears, lingering on the air, making every hair on his arms stand on its end.

And then he was on the field himself, and it wasn’t a field at all: a crystal hall was domed high above his head, the orange glass of it glinting as the sun eked through it, and Solas’ hand touched his.

“I don’t know if men can dance together at an event like this,” Lavellan said as Solas pulled him close, their chests together. Solas’ hand was on Lavellan’s shoulder, and the other touched Lavellan’s hand, the one with the Anchor buried like an ore vein in the palm: their fingertips touched, but their palms did not brush. This was chastity on an elvhen dancefloor, and Lavellan didn’t feel like he could breathe as his hand settled, without his permission, on Solas’ waist.

It was as though he had known the steps all his life, they came to him so easily, and he and Solas danced together to the impossibly ancient music thrumming from far beneath their feet, and far above them, from the sky itself. How one danced to a melody that flowed as molasses, so slow it was almost painful, Lavellan could never explain, and yet he did it easily, as though he’d always been made to.

“It isn’t our genders that might make people take pause,” Solas murmured, and Lavellan looked past him at the other dancers, hundreds of them, filling the crystal hall to the very brim… They were all elves, every one of them. For half a second, Lavellan marvelled that he had never seen so many elves, and only elves, with no vallaslin on their faces, and then panicked. “Peace, lethallin,” Solas said. “Your vallaslin is gone.”

“You say it like the vallaslin was the only mark of ownership I ever wore,” Lavellan said. He was surprised, after he said it: Solas looked surprised too, and glanced to the Anchor in his palm. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Solas smiled. His eyes were like stained glass.

“Don’t kiss me,” Lavellan said.

“I wouldn’t presume to,” Solas said. “Even in the Fade. _Especially_ in the Fade.”

“How long have all these people been dead?” Lavellan asked.

Solas’ sad smile spoke multitudes, and over his shoulder, still up on the cliff top, Lavellan saw the Dread Wolf turn away.


	6. Chapter 6

Lavellan had his hands spread, and the Iron Bull watched him with fascination as more energy glowed between his palms, gathering and gathering, the bright green glint becoming sharper and sharper. He almost looked away, but he managed to keep his gaze on the elf as Lavellan let the energy free, and it swirled in the air, taking up piece after piece of the smashed vase. There must have been a few hundred of them – Bull certainly hadn’t missed the look of satisfaction on Solas’ face as he’d smashed the Orlesian china, and Bull had laughed with him at the look of dismay on Lavellan’s face.

The magic gathered in the air, little tendrils rushing out and grabbing the individual bits of china, the fragments rushing in toward the centre, and they glowed at their edges as they met one another.

“Remember what I said, lethallin,” Solas said crisply, his back straight, his hands behind it. He was good at barking orders. He’d said he’d been involved in a few elven skirmishes further north, and he and Blackwall got on well as two soldiers in common – two soldiers familiar with deception, Bull supposed. “Don’t drop the spell until it’s complete.”

He remembered, once, that he’d said, “_Children don’t learn unless you shout at them,”_ when Blackwall used to train the new soldiers in, and they had liked Blackwall, just as much as the new mages had jumped at the chance to train under Solas, as much as they did if Vivienne deigned to take them through some drills, much to her infuriation. That was all a long time ago, now, it seemed like. 

And Bull had never seen him do drills like _this_ with the new mages.

“I have all the fragments,” Lavellan said, and Bull could see him scanning the floor for more pieces of china, then examining the vase, letting it rotate in the air. “I have them.”

“You’re certain?” Solas asked, arching an eyebrow.

Another hesitation.

“Yes,” Lavellan said.

“Very well.”

The vase landed on the floor with a gentle clink, and Solas stepped slowly forward, moving around the edges of the vase. There weren’t even any cracks on it, the fine mosaic design beautifully rendered with the same symmetry it had had before, and yet Lavellan was stiff and all but bouncing on his heels as he watched Solas take it in, on tenterhooks for the elf’s decision.

Solas took hold of the rim of the vase, lifted it, and let the side of it rest on the back of his palm as he showed Lavellan the base.

The fragment missing was triangular, and Lavellan’s mouth dropped open as Solas smiled at him, and then dropped the vase. To his credit, he didn’t wince as it shattered.

Solas held up the missing piece.

“Solas!” Lavellan protested.

“Stop looking with your _eyes_,” Solas ordered sternly, his expression momentarily severe. “Use your magic to feel if it’s complete, and stop relying on the realm of the physical.”

“I don’t see why it matters what senses I use,” Lavellan said sharply, and it was interesting, seeing him actually get pissed off with Solas, stepping toward him so that they were toe-to-toe. Solas was taller than Lavellan, but Bull never forgot for a second that Lavellan was stronger than him, if magic wasn’t on the table, that Lavellan could probably snap Solas in two if he wanted to, even with just his rogue’s muscle. By the look in Solas’ eyes, all vexed because his student wasn’t asking, “How high?” when Solas said to jump, Solas never forgot it either. “My senses are already—!”

“_Insufficient_,” Solas growled, leaning in toward him, putting an emphasis on the dental sound that made it click on the air. “Here, in the physical realm, you might trust your eyes, your ears, your sense of touch, but if I have to blind and deafen you to all that might distract you, Mahanon, I _will._”

“But—”

“But in the Fade!” Solas barked, leaning over him, and Bull saw Lavellan take a half step back, leaning away. Even from here, he could feel the energy crackling on the air between them – it wasn’t just Solas. It was Lavellan who started it first, the green-tinted energy lingering on the air, and Solas had the same kind of energy signature, but cleaner, somehow, fresher – or older, maybe. Bull didn’t know the specifics. “In the Fade, you will not be able to rely on your keen hunter’s senses, you will not be able to trust what your eyes see, what your nose smells, what your tongue tastes, or your skin feels! All will deceive you _except_ what you feel with your mana!”

Lavellan turned his gaze away, looking at the ground.

Funnily enough, it was a relief. If Bull and Lavellan were in a scene together, if Lavellan was mouthing off and Bull growled back, Lavellan would never turn his gaze away, wouldn’t break it, even if he _was_ ashamed.

Solas had cowed him. If he was letting himself be cowed—

Bull didn’t know why he let himself get into these stupid little analyses about their relationship. Lavellan wanted _Bull_ – he loved Bull, told him so all the time, and Bull didn’t disbelieve him, and Bull loved him back, loved him so much that his chest _ached_ sometimes, ‘cause his heart was across the room, doing magic drills with an elvish hobo and looking like he wanted to punch him.

Solas dropped the missing piece into the mess on the floor.

“Again,” he said.

“Have you got more pieces in your pocket?” Lavellan demanded.

“You tell me, lethallin,” Solas said, walking away, and Lavellan sighed like an imekari bored of his schoolwork, then raised his palms again.

\--

The funny thing was, it kinda pissed Bull off. He hadn’t thought of it much when they were out in the field, but now they were back at Skyhold for a little while? It pissed him off.

Not that Solas wanted Lavellan.

Bull could understand wanting Lavellan. He was _hot_, sure, but it was more than that. Bull watched him, now, curled up in the corner of the tavern beside Bull with Krem’s feet in his lap, paging through his book and not even pretending he was paying attention to the Chargers’ stories. He liked watching the concentration on Lavellan’s face when he read, the furrow in his brow, the way he pressed his lips together and craned his neck forward just slightly. Lavellan’s concentration was incredible.

Bull liked… He liked that Lavellan concentrated. He thought it was cute, how his interest in a cache would switch off as soon as he realized there were no books in a room. He liked the way he would ask question after question of anyone that seemed halfway interested in asking them, make little notes in his diary after. He did that with Bull, sometimes, and never even realized he was doing so until Bull burst out laughing: he’d sit with him and ask him about the Qun, or Par Vollen, or the fucking wax he used on his axe. There was something exciting, about a guy who’d ask questions that easily, no shame, never any shame.

And he was _kind_ – he was kind, and quiet, with a kind of steel-hardness underneath when he needed to be nasty, and a sharp sense of humour underneath it all. He could be a little _bitch_, at times, and Bull liked that, liked that he could watch Lavellan with some Orlesians and watch them try not to gasp when he said something so venomous, so sweetly and so politely, that they were actually shocked by it.

And Solas had never wanted any of that.

That was the thing – Solas hadn’t, Bull didn’t think, been attracted, in the beginning. He’d been happy with what Lavellan had come to him with, been a _mentor_. He was like that with all the elves at Skyhold, Bull knew, knew that the elvish servants liked him, were at home with him the same way they had been with Varric, felt like they were okay with him. He’d taught Lavellan, answered his questions – admired him, sure, been protective of him, sure, but he hadn’t _wanted_ him.

Not until he started really concentrating on the magic.

Was that shallow of him?

Bull wasn’t sure – he’d been with mages, thought mages could be hot, didn’t ever entertain the idea of avoiding them particularly. And yet… As much as Solas told people – told Lavellan, even – that he didn’t really identify with the other elves, he only really _looked_ at other elves. Women, only, and never servants or refugees. Confident women, elvish women with their backs straight and their heads high.

Bull had watched him watching Dalish, once, and when she’d caught him looking and turned a wicked smile on him, Solas had actually _blushed_, and turned his head away.

But with Lavellan, now, he was… quiet. Confident. Never voiced a thing, never—

“Bull?” Lavellan asked, and Bull glanced at him, letting Lavellan take hold of his hand. His hands always looked big in Lavellan’s own: Lavellan brought it to his mouth, brushing the backs of Bull’s knuckles with his lips, and Bull smiled.

“Yeah, kadan?”

“You’re thinking very loudly.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And what am I thinking of?”

“Well…” Lavellan leaned in, leaning his cheek against Bull’s shoulder. “I think I could _get_ you to think of something.”

“Like a guessing game?”

“I don’t think it’s hard to guess.”

“Oh, I bet it’s _hard_.”

“I hate you two,” Krem said, withdrawing his feet from Lavellan’s knees, and Bull watched Lavellan laugh, the whiteness of his teeth, the brightness of his smile, the glitter in his eyes.

“Let’s go to bed,” Bull said. “You want to ask Krem to come? He could watch!”

“Krem can come on his own, thanks,” Krem said.

“Yeah, as usual,” Bull murmured, and Krem threw a cushion at him. “G’night, you little bastard.”

“Good night, you _big_ bastard,” Krem said. “Mahanon.”

“Good night, Krem,” Lavellan said softly, and they made their way toward the stairs. Bull had offered back the keys, but they'd let him keep the room - they weren't as jam-packed at Skyhold, not like they used to be, and it was useful to have a room right above the tavern.

Once they were in bed together, Lavellan straddled Bull’s thighs, and he reached up to cup Bull’s cheeks, brushing his thumbs over his cheekbones. There was an intensity to his gaze, quiet and concentrated, his lips downturned at their edges.

“You’re worried,” he said softly. “About Solas?”

“You seemed pretty pissed with him this morning,” Bull murmured. “He’s riding you hard.”

“I’m improving fast, though,” Lavellan murmured. He stared into space for a second, thoughtful, then met Bull's gaze again. "I know what he's saying is important, but it's hard. It doesn't come naturally to me, like it does with him. You should hear the lecture he gave me yesterday. Mr Spirits-Are-Good changes his tune when it comes to doing exercises in the Fade." 

"You're doing exercises in the Fade now?" Bull asked, arching an eyebrow. 

Lavellan shook his head. "He says I'm not ready. That I'm not controlled enough, and that I trust the physical too much. That I'm undisciplined, basically." 

"You're not undisciplined," Bull reminded him, reaching up to set his knuckles under Lavellan's chin. "Bet he never said you were." 

"Dorian and Blackwall are coming back this week. Vivienne too. Not for long."

Bull stared up at Lavellan's face, trying to make sense of what he saw there, the nerves, the uncertainty. He'd never been comfortable with Vivienne - the way she spoke to him had always rubbed the wrong way, and while she'd never actually shown a prejudice against elves that Bull had noticed, there was the slightest bit of condescension, expectation, that showed with Viv and the servants, who were mostly elves. That rubbed Lavellan wrong, and even if he didn't, he had never agreed with her on the subject of mages.

But Dorian? Lavellan loved Dorian. They were friends, good friends, read books together, debated history, taught each other dances or bits of Tevene and Elvish, argued about clothes. Dorian even took an interest in hunting, when Lavellan offered to show him - guy had even learned how to skin a nug, and had waved the evidence of his butchery proudly in the face of everyone at camp. 

"You're scared they'll think you're not good enough, huh?" Bull asked softly. "What, you don't want to finish up your drills with Solas and then do some with Madame de Fer?" 

"I don't know what they'll see when they look at me," Lavellan said quietly. 

"They'll see their friend. Weird little Dalish librarian shoved into an acrobat's body, weird aversion to shoes, even fancy Orlesian ones." 

Lavellan smiled, but it was weak. 

"Why?" Bull asked. "What is it you're worried they'll see, kadan?" 

Something caught in Lavellan's eyes. His expression was… The Iron Bull didn't know what to make of it, the look in his eyes, kinda sad, kinda uncertain, kinda _scared_. 

"Mahanon?"

"It isn't magic as they know it. It isn't magic like they have it. Vivienne said before she didn't think I should use it the way I do, that… That it's presumptuous of me, or dangerous. What if they think it's dangerous?" 

"You're not gonna turn into a demon, kadan," Bull said softly. 

Lavellan fell forward against his chest, burying his face in his neck. "So we hope," Lavellan murmured. 

"Sleep. I'll fuck you real hard in the morning, wake you up with it."

He felt Lavellan's smile against his skin. 

It only occurred to him, just as he was dropping off to sleep in that sudden dreamy logic, that cuddling was as good a way to break eye contact as turning his head away. 

That stung, but he slept anyway. 

\--

The Dread Wolf said, "Are you frightened of demons, da'len?" 

"No," Lavellan answered. 

"Spirits?" 

"No." 

The Dread Wolf leaned closer, so close his nose nudged the back of Lavellan's hair, his breath hot. Lavellan could smell him, a sort of clean smell, like the scent of a fresh breeze, and underneath, the coppery scent of fresh blood. He could imagine it dripping from the monster's teeth. 

“_Me?”_

Lavellan shook his head.

“No?” the Dread Wolf asked softly. His teeth grazed Lavellan’s neck.

“No,” Lavellan said.

“Foolish,” the Dread Wolf purred, but he didn’t bite. “Run, da’len. Don’t let me catch you.”

“What will you do, if I let you?”

The Dread Wolf laughed.

“Don’t let me,” he repeated seriously, and Lavellan launched himself forward.

\--

“Again!” Solas barked, clapping his hands together, and Bull leaned forward on the wall, watching. He and Dorian were up by the tavern, looking down over the ramparts at Solas and Lavellan as they trained in the yard. Blackwall was outside the tavern, sitting with Lace Harding and talking with her idly over whittling, and Vivienne was standing on the bridge to Cullen’s office.

A lot of people were watching.

Bull knew that Lavellan didn’t like to be watched, but he usually brushed it off when he was training, got tunnel vision, focused only on the other person in the ring. Bull couldn’t tell, exactly, not from here, but he could smell Lavellan’s frustration, his irritation, on the air, could smell the difference in his sweat.

Lavellan held up one hand, green fire gathering in his hand, and then he threw it at Solas.

It evaporated as it hit Solas’ shield, absorbed.

“_Again!”_

Lavellan growled something in Elvish, exhaling hard. He looked tired – they’d been drilling for nearly an hour, now, and every sphere of flame he threw at Solas seemed to be weaker than the last. He was tiring out – who wouldn’t?

“Again,” Solas repeated.

Bull made out the word “no” – albeit not a very polite one – and he heard the words for “tired” and “rest”.

“_Again_,” Solas said, sharper this time, an order: it was crisp and cutting, and Bull could see that Lavellan was flagging, his shoulders forward, his breathing heavy. He said something else – quickly? A phrase that Bull would colloquially translate as _Buck up_.

“That’s a naughty word,” Dorian murmured musingly. “I didn’t know Solas knew words like that.”

“Which one?”

Lavellan let out a bark of frustration, cutting through any definition Dorian might have given him. The next thing, it was fast and venomous and nasty. Once upon a time, the Iron Bull thought that Elvish was a sweet, poetic language, that everything was meandering and gentle, but that had been before he heard Lavellan use it, heard him curse under his breath or condemn enemies to his gods, heard him and Solas argue over history, or poetry, or whatever the fuck _this_ was.

“Fine,” Solas said in Trade. “I’ll drop my shields. Best me magic-to-magic, lethallin, and we will retire.”

Lavellan snapped something that Bull had no problem understanding at all: _“Dread Wolf take you_.”

“Come, then,” Solas said, his voice calculatedly calm. He was pissed off, Bull could see that. There was fury in his expression, his lip curled, and then—

It wasn’t like seeing the mages going at it. Bull could feel Dorian go stiff next to him, the way that Lavellan and Solas threw shit at each other – they weren’t using staves, either of them, and Bull knew that most mages got tired really quickly without using a staff, depending on what spells they were using.

Lavellan fought like a rogue, even with magic.

He set the grass under Solas’ feet on fire instead of Solas himself; he made ice spikes come up at his side so that Solas stumbled into the lightning he threw forward; he did something to Solas’ shirt, something that made Solas stumble, and then he lunged.

Solas’ hand wrapped around Lavellan’s throat, lifting him a clean few inches off the ground, and Lavellan hissed as Solas pinned him to the ground.

“Maker’s breath,” Dorian hissed, and then he was moving: Bull could see, across the yard, Vivienne rushing to do the same.

\--

Lavellan was tired.

So tired he couldn’t stand it. He could feel the Anchor pulsing in his hand, and he’d barely been able to sleep last night, when it felt like all night long he’d been running with the wolf at his heels, kept waking and then struggling to get back to sleep again, with the monster dogging his steps.

The rushing energy went right up his arm, right up to the bone in his jaw, and there was a lighter energy fizzling all through him, the magic _crackling_. He was _exhausted_.

“I barely slept last night and I—”

“_Enough_ with the excuses! Quit mewling like a kicked pup and _steel yourself_. You want to cry like a bitch, lethallin, do so, but I shall not waste my time on training you any further!”

“Oh, _fuck off!”_

“You need to overwhelm my shields,” Solas said sharply. “Once you overcome them and show me you can, I will let you—”

“I’m _tired!_ Let me fucking _rest! _I’ll put you on your back, Solas, I damn well will!”

He could see Solas’ face. Solas had been frustrated with him all day, ever since Lavellan had tried to excuse his way out of their daily training, because he wanted time to sleep, to rest, to bullshit with Dorian and watch Blackwall play with Sera and Cole, he wanted a _break_.

There was no break from the mark buried in him. It was an Anchor, in more ways than one.

“Fine,” Solas said, dropping the Elvish, now, and Lavellan was aware of everyone watching them, he so _hated_ to be watched. “I’ll drop my shields. Best me magic-to-magic, lethallin, and we will retire.”

“Fen’Harel ma halam,” Lavellan snapped.

Solas’ demeanour became abruptly colder. He was angry, before – the anger evaporated into cold fury, and Lavellan felt an anxious ball in the pit of his chest, but he didn’t voice it, didn’t draw attention to it. Solas had been getting on his nerves these past few weeks, and even as he could see the results, could see himself improving, feel the magic getting easier, he wanted—

And it was ungrateful of him, he knew. Solas was keeping him alive, Solas was breathing life into him he wouldn’t have had, otherwise, made him so much more dangerous than he had been before, and yet, couldn’t he have _one_ day…?

“Come, then,” Solas said, and Lavellan called on every embankment of magic he could think of.

It burned.

He could feel the cold heat in his veins as he drew more and more magic from the Fade, and he was _tired_, the exhaustion blistering in his bones, and when he launched himself forward, to use his hands—

He caught Solas by the ankle with his foot, grabbed one wrist, but the other one had come around his throat, and Lavellan choked as Solas lifted him clean off the grass, scarcely able to kick.

“What did I tell you?” Solas demanded, his gaze intent on Lavellan’s, and he spoke in a low hiss that slithered up Lavellan’s spine, coiling around his nerves and setting them aflame. He could feel the warmth, the _strength_, of his palm. “You rely too much on your physical body. You cannot overwhelm me with your muscle alone.”

“Solas, let him _down_!” Lavellan heard Dorian shout, felt the pulse of Dorian’s own magic as Lavellan dug his fingernails into Solas’ wrist.

His _skin_ felt hot. There was something about the way Solas looked at him, like he was ready to devour him, and Lavellan _wanted_, but he’d never _wanted_, not Solas, not…

“Overwhelm me, and I shall relent,” Solas said, squeezing, and Lavellan hissed.

“I _can’t_—”

“You _can_,” Solas growled, and Lavellan let the heat in his skin rise to the surface.

Solas hissed in pain when the flames flickered to meet his palm, falling back, and Lavellan whipped out with a hand when Solas went to grab him with his other hand, but he misjudged the mark, and he hit Solas hard in the nose instead of in the neck.

It cracked, audibly.

“Solas!” Lavellan gasped out as Solas fell on his arse, and Solas laughed through his broken nose, his hand hovering over his bleeding nose as it gushed hot and red over his mouth. “Heal it, heal it—”

“You broke it, lethallin,” Solas mumbled, not without humour. “You repair it.”

“Inquisitor, are you alright?” Dorian asked.

“Mahanon,” Vivienne said, sweeping over. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Lavellan said, distracted, and he focused on the sensation of the healing magic as it flickered between his palms, finding the break in the cartilage and making it set back into place. It was a softer noise, this time, a click, and he closed his eyes to better visualise the capillaries that had burst in the sudden movement, the thin skin inside Solas’ nostrils.

“I believe I said,” Solas said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at the blood, “_not_ to rely on your fists.”

“Fasta _vass_, Solas, you could have hurt him!”

“And instead,” Solas said, smiling at Lavellan with bloodied teeth, not even glancing at Vivienne or Dorian, “he hurt me.”

“I’m so—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Solas said. “Go. You bested me, lethallin. You’ve earned your day’s respite.”

Lavellan’s desire to drink in the tavern with Bull and Dorian had disappeared like smoke. He wanted to sit in the rotunda with Solas, watch him drink tea and listen to him speak about the Fade (_or put his hand on Lavellan’s throat and bare his teeth and_—)

“More than a day, I should think,” Vivienne said quietly, her gaze on Solas. It was foreboding, to say the least. “You go, boys.”

“Join us,” Lavellan said, surprising himself, and Vivienne looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t want her to walk Solas back to his office, to needle at him, to demand of him why he should train Lavellan so hard, or why Lavellan should lose his temper. No matter the audience, it was for him and Solas, not for anyone else, not… “Please?”

“Very well,” Vivienne said softly, and they all turned their back on Solas as they moved toward the Herald’s Rest, Dorian’s arm about his shoulder.

Lavellan resisted the urge to look back.

\--

“In the Fade,” Cole said when Solas entered the rotunda, wiping the last of the blood from his face, “what you feel makes others feel the same. Your feelings, your wants, they touch _theirs_. All desires are the same, in the Fade, aren’t they? The edges blur together.”

“Not always,” Solas said, aware of how evasive it was.

“Is that how it was, for elves?” Cole asked, his gaze intent on Solas, undeterred. “Before?” A beat passed, Cole’s eyes unblinking, his hat in his lap so he could stare Solas in the face. “Now?”

“Funny, Cole,” Solas said softly. “That they all think you incapable of directness.”

“It will hurt me, when it happens, when you tear it down,” Cole said, “because of what I am, now. Will it hurt him? Will it hurt him less, now, than it would have?”

“I don’t know.”

“His feelings, when you touch him, are different to when you don’t,” Cole said, and there was the slightest bit of indignation, of reproach, in his tone, and he was not wrong to sound that way. Solas did his best to ignore his guilt. “Why is it that you hold yourself inside, behind your skin and teeth and aura, with spirits, and not with him? You make him want you, and you don’t mean to. He burned you.”

“He did.”

“He _hit_ you.”

“He did.”

“You’re smiling,” Cole said. “Do you know that?”

He knew now.

He could feel his lips curled up into the expression, and he reached up to touch his own lips. Blood still clung to his tongue.

“You want him more than you’ve ever wanted anyone,” Cole said. “Your skin hot, humming, hairs standing on end, hands grasping, you could—”

“Stop.”

“He dreams of the wolf chasing him, wanting to bite at his neck,” Cole said. “It’s a sex thing, I think.”

“Yes,” Solas said. “I expect so.”

Cole looked down at his fingernails. “Can we play chess?” he asked.

“If you like,” Solas murmured, and as was always the case when he and Cole played, he conjured the board with veilfire on the air, some of the pieces so hot they burned white, the others a dark, deep green.

“I don’t think I want to go back to being a spirit, when the Veil comes down,” Cole said conversationally. “I think that I would rather die.”

It cut Solas to the core. His chest ached – the guilt over Lavellan was heavily compounded, now, mingling with guilt over Cole, guilt over the Veil, guilt over all of it, and the pain eked through his very veins. “I’ll make a note of it.”

“Thank you.”

\--

“Is that how you train together?” Vivienne asked. “No staves?”

“I can use a staff,” Lavellan said softly.

Dorian had made him drink a whole bottle of lyrium potion, even though it had made him gag, and he did feel better than he had before, did feel less tired to his bones, if not more well-rested. He was letting Dorian comb his hair, ostensibly to braid it into something more complicated and more handsome, but he wasn’t really thinking of how it might look, after – he was concentrating on Dorian’s fingers pulling at his scalp.

He’d never had siblings. He wondered, at times, what it might be like having a brother like Dorian, to be… He didn’t want to voice that thought. He imagined it would upset Dorian, somehow.

“He could have _killed_ you,” Vivienne said sharply. “Lifting you off the ground by your _throat_, no warning—”

“I had warning,” Lavellan said. “If you knew Elvish, you’d know that.”

Vivienne gave him a cold look, and Lavellan looked down at his lap.

“Yes, well, do forgive me for saying so, my friend,” Dorian said, tugging a little harder at the braid, “but you two seem to be training rather hard, given that you’ve closed most of the rifts left, now, barring a few stragglers in Orlais. Is there some upcoming six-hundred-year war you haven’t told us about? Perhaps a gigantic monster you’ve somehow to best? A creature of myth and legend?”

“I want to be able to use the Anchor,” Lavellan said. “Properly.”

“He looked pretty damn pleased that you punched him in the face,” Bull said. There was something Lavellan couldn’t quite untangle in his tone.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I think he was happier that you lit your skin on fire,” Dorian murmured. “Did a trick like that with a charming pirate from Rivain, once.”

“Bet he liked it more,” Bull said, and Dorian laughed.

Bull was watching Lavellan, and Lavellan looked up, meeting his eye. Bull gave him a small, encouraging smile, and Lavellan relaxed the tiniest bit.

\--

“You didn’t sleep that much last night,” Bull said, as they ascended the stairs to Lavellan’s quarters. “Kept waking up.”

“Kept dreaming.”

“You dreaming of that wolf thing?”

Lavellan was silent. Bull watched his ass as he came up the steps.

“You didn’t tell me that started up again,” Bull said.

“I didn’t tell anybody. I don’t really like to talk about it.”

“He hurt you?”

“He threatens to.”

“That why Solas doesn’t want you in the Fade?”

“I’m always in the Fade,” Lavellan said, his voice a little bit wooden. “It’s as things were meant to be.” He stopped, suddenly, on the stair, staring forward, and Bull hesitated for just a second before he reached out, hand hovering over his lower back, not touching.

“Hey. Kadan. You okay?”

“I… I don’t know why I said that,” Lavellan said softly. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. Must we talk about magic?”

“What do you want to talk about? Sex?”

“No,” Lavellan said, shaking his head. “Not tonight. Will you tell me— Teach me philosophy. Koslun.”

“Okay,” Bull said “Asit tal-eb.”

“For the world and self are one,” Lavellan said. “Existence is a choice. A self of suffering brings only suffering into the world. It is a choice, and we can refuse it.”

“Kinda hot when you quote the Qun at me,” Bull said, and Lavellan laughed, breathlessly, sounding desperately relieved. “Don’t know that I have stuff to teach you.”

“You always have things to teach me,” Lavellan said, looking at Bull with a look of such adoration in his eyes that Bull’s heart skipped a beat, and he leaned in, catching Lavellan’s mouth in a quick kiss. “If I massage your shoulders, will you correct my technique?”

“You want me to?”

“If you need to.”

“Okay.” Bull patted his hip, and Lavellan sighed softly, pulling Bull toward the bed.

\--

When the Dread Wolf pinned him in the dirt, one great paw on his shoulders, Lavellan cried out, struggled, but it didn’t mean anything, and he knew it didn’t mean anything, because he’d let the Dread Wolf catch him.

His teeth were sharp.

\--

“Koslun’s _balls_, kadan,” Bull said the next morning, when Lavellan woke, soaked in sweat, come spattered on his thighs, feeling so well-rested he couldn’t believe he was still in his own body, so _satisfied_. “Makes a guy almost want to dream like you guys do.”

“Did you just— _watch_ me?” Lavellan asked. “I need to _bathe_.”

“Nuh-uh,” Bull said, and he dragged Lavellan up and into his lap, dragging nails down his back and making Lavellan groan. “You need to tell me _every detail_, so I can see what I need to do to make you moan like that when you’re awake.”

Lavellan swallowed. Felt the heat in his cheeks.

“You won’t think it’s sexy.”

“You did.”

“I don’t now.”

“Well, now you _gotta_ tell me.”

Lavellan tried to let the words gather on his tongue. They wouldn’t come, and Bull cupped his cheek.

“You don’t want to tell me,” he said softly. “That’s okay, kadan. It’s your dream, s’not like you could control it, right?”

“I let him catch me,” Lavellan said.

“And he fucked you?”

“No,” Lavellan said, looking Bull in the eye. “He… I think he killed me. He split me open, anyway. Not in a sexy way, it was like I was cleaved in two.”

Bull surged to kiss him like it was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard, and Lavellan relaxed underneath him, let Bull take over, let him touch Lavellan in the ways that the Dread Wolf hadn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t—

Bull rushed over him like the sea, all-encompassing, inescapable, something he could just yield to.

Lavellan said, breathlessly, “Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun,” and Bull kissed him so hard it bruised.

\--

He saw Cole, later that day.

“I don’t think it will hurt you,” Cole said pensively. “I don’t think that he’ll let it.”

“It isn’t hurting me,” Lavellan said. “The Anchor. Not… Not like it used to.”

“You’ve let it in, now,” Cole said. “You’ve digested it, so that it can’t digest you. Eating, aching, echoing, but you can’t take it out, anymore. He would have, you know. If you’d let things be. Now, I don’t know what will happen, but I don’t think it will hurt you.”

Lavellan didn’t know what to make of it, sometimes, when Cole spoke like this, in circles, circles no one else could see.

“Mahanon,” Cole said quietly.

“Yeah, Cole?”

“Being hurt changes you. But not being hurt isn’t the same as not being changed. You don’t have to hurt to change.”

“I won’t change,” Lavellan said.

“I did,” Cole said. “It isn’t… bad. It wasn’t the way I did it. I don’t know if it’s the same, the other way.”

“Cole, what are you talking about?”

Cole threw his arms around Lavellan’ chest, and Lavellan hugged him back automatically, his chin on top of Cole’s head, his arms wrapped around his shoulders. Cole was warm, and Lavellan could feel how different he was to both humans and elves, and to the Iron Bull, could feel…

He was more sensitive to it, now, the subtle differences to the energy on the air. Was that how Cole saw the world?

“It used to be,” Cole said. “But it would have been alright, if I’d gone the other way.” Cole mashed his face against Lavellan’s chest, squeezing him tightly. “It will be alright for you too.”

“Thank you,” Lavellan said.

“You don’t know what you’re thanking me for.”

“I know it’s important to you.”

Cole smiled up at him, sweetly. “You should hold onto that,” Cole said softly. “It will help… But you’ll still change. He won’t stop chasing you if you don’t stop chasing him. Paws pounding on the ground, teeth bared, biting… _Is_ it a sex thing?”

“Yeah,” Lavellan said. “I guess so.”

Cole nodded.

His words ticked over in Lavellan’s head, never making any more sense than they did the first time, all day.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m surprised you’re not more tired, after all that yesterday,” Dorian murmured, and Lavellan glanced up from his breakfast. He felt well-rested, after a night of relatively dreamless sleep, and he was still as Dorian looked him critically over, taking him, seeming to analyse him for signs of damage or weakness. “You should be.”

“Should I?” Lavellan asked, and Dorian reached to touch his hand, his fingers looping around Lavellan’s wrist. He tilted it, slightly, so that he could see the Anchor in Lavellan’s palm.

He felt the touch of Dorian’s magic against his own, feeling different to Lavellan’s, and different again to Solas’. Dorian’s magic felt deep and thick and sickly-sweet, like tainted honey – it was like the sweet smell that clung to rotted things.

“Yes,” Dorian murmured, his expression serious. “That’s what Necromancy feels like. It’s different to Rift Magic, and certainly different to anything under the sphere of Spirit Healing, as Solas does. But then, this isn’t…” He drew his hand back. Lavellan didn’t like the expression on his face, the twisted shape of his mouth. “How did you heal Solas, yesterday?”

“Put the cartilage back. Repaired the torn capillaries.”

“No,” Dorian said. “What magic?”

“I don’t _know_, magic.” Lavellan’s tone was nastier than he meant it to be. “Dorian, I don’t care for the look on your face.”

Dorian stepped back, shaking his head. “I… I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m worried for you. You know, I suppose, that most mages take certain specialisations. Even hedge mages, apostates, they move toward certain areas of magic. If you think of magic as a well one draws from, imagine a mage’s specialisation as the bucket they craft to draw from it. Even if you don’t research a specific design, there are base designs one naturally moves toward – a hollowed-out stone, a bucket of wood planks or a stump hollowed into a bowl, one smelted of metal…”

“And?” Lavellan asked, aware of the indignation in his voice, the defensiveness to his tone, and he didn’t know why he found it there, but Dorian set his jaw, his eyes darkening somewhat.

“One doesn’t draw from the well of magic with magic alone,” he said quietly. “It isn’t _done_.”

“It’s what Solas does.”

“Yes,” Dorian said icily. “I suppose one does learn from one’s teacher.” Lavellan stood to his feet, but Dorian spread his hands, shaking his head. “I’m not— My apologies, it isn’t you that I’m angry at. I don’t want you to be hurt, my friend, that’s all. The— The Well of Sorrows. Does it ail you?”

“That’s not your business,” Lavellan said quietly.

Dorian’s brow furrowed slightly, his lips parting, and he leaned back slightly, his head tilting. “Do you still hear it? The voices?”

Lavellan didn’t answer. He was aware of the weight of his own tongue in his mouth. It wasn’t that the voices had gone silent – he was always aware of them there, as had been when he had met Asha’Bellanar, that fragment of Mythal left alive – but they were quiet, now, as though the Well was _inside_ him, its surface smooth and undisturbed. If he wanted to, he could dip his hand into it, and drink. Reminding him, though, had made the waters shift, and he could hear the whispers at the edges of his understanding, heightening in volume as the seconds passed him by.

“Why don’t you and I spar?” Dorian asked softly. “Get rid of some of this tension you’re feeling?”

The voices were roaring in his ears.

“I’m sorry that your time back in the Imperium has made you think I might be so easy to manipulate,” Lavellan said quietly, aware of the steel in his voice, and Dorian’s surprise showed on his face. He felt hurt. He felt like there were jagged edges buried in his chest, felt like Dorian was… “_Really_? You thought to draw me into the ring, that you might test my magic without my noticing? Why not just knock me out and run your experiments, Dorian, if you’re so keen?”

“No,” Dorian said, shaking his head. “No, Mahanon, that isn’t—”

“Isn’t it? You see I don’t want to answer your questions with the depths you wish for answers, so you’re trying to obscure the fact that you’re asking them at all – is that not so?”

“I’m _frightened_ for you,” Dorian snapped.

“Oh? What is it you’re frightened of?”

“That magic could _kill_ you!” Dorian hissed.

Lavellan laughed, bitterly. “And has it occurred to you, Dorian, that it might be what’s keeping me alive?”

Dorian’s mouth fell open. It wasn’t just his face that dropped, this time, though – his shoulders fell back, his chest opening, and he stared at Lavellan’s face before glancing down to the mark on his palm, the green crystal buried in the flesh there.

Lavellan hadn’t mean to say that.

“Mahanon, the Anchor—”

“Don’t,” Lavellan said, stepping back and away from him. “Don’t.”

\--

_going to die and it will be slow and painful over many days the anchor will eat you alive it will consume you if you don’t feed it something else if you don’t eat it first don’t you realise that this is the wisdom we give you this is our wisdom the wisdom of Mythal it will devour you if you do not_

Solas was already on his feet in the rotunda, and Lavellan moved directly up to him, feeling… There was some tension in his chest he didn’t know what to do with, and for some reason he felt like he shouldn’t touch Solas, shouldn’t reach out and brush his arm, like he wanted to. Some of the voices—

_soon as you touch him it starts spirit into spirit the strong over the weak the weak over the strong that was how it was is will be should be was once upon a time in the land of elvhenan do you want to return this is how you return won’t you listen to us won’t you listen to him touch him don’t touch him touch him he will devour you if you don’t devour him first _

Lavellan closed his hand into a fist, his fingers brushing the green marking on his palm, and he put his hand at his side. His ears were ringing.

_devour him devour you the mark devours the magic devours the magic will bleed bleed bleed it wants it aches it is just on the other side of the veil let it touch you_

“Dorian gave me a lecture,” he said. He was all but swaying on his feet, his mouth dry.

_the mage knows and he will stop you he knows that power calls to power that power devours and consumes that the mark will consume you he would have you free but he does not know what freedom is, you could make him free, you could make the world free, if you will only touch him, let him consume you or consume him first, it will all happen the same_

The voices overlapped, conflicting advice, conflicting meaning, conflicting voices. He couldn’t make sense of any of it, feeling it rattle in his ears.

“Good morning to you too, lethallin,” Solas said, not looking up from the book in his hands.

_let him speak to you in the language of elvhenan and learn words you do not know the words you do not know make the world you do not know do you want that world that world could be yours beneath your heel just touch him you will see don’t touch him don’t let him teach you go to the bull and be his heart and die there it will be kinder kinder for whom for him or for you what is kindness in a world of pain and distance where you walk on dead elves_

“I didn’t… I said— I…”

It wasn’t easy to speak. His tongue felt as though it were tied in knots, and the voices were getting louder and louder, drowning out everything else, making him dizzy, making his head spin.

Solas glanced at him, concern showing on his face, and he set the book quietly aside on the desktop, reaching to touch him. Lavellan felt the instinct to step away, the voices ringing to a loud crescendo, but didn’t, and as soon as Solas’ palm touched his shoulder Lavellan felt the tension dissipate like fog before a warm wind, his shoulders loosening. The voices, all at once, were silent. Why shouldn’t Solas touch him? He _liked_ it when Solas touched him, wanted to touch him back, at times, it was comforting, there was a security in it, a silence in it. He wanted…

Did he?

“What is it?” Solas asked, his thumb rubbing over the edge of Lavellan’s shoulder through the fabric of his shirt.

“I told him…” Lavellan hesitated, swallowing, and when Solas squeezed his shoulder he fell forward, pressing his face against Solas’ chest. Solas immediately wrapped his arms around him, drawing his fingers a little through his hair, and Lavellan inhaled, taking in… Solas smelled of samphire and sea-salted breezes, the lambs’ wool of his tunic warm and soft to the touch, the body warm and hard beneath. He wondered what Solas’ skin felt like, underneath, imagined it was smoother than Bull’s, not so scarred, not so thick, and then caught himself, guilt dragging down right through to the base of his gut. “I told him about the Anchor. That it was killing me, before, that it’s still… I didn’t mean to. He caught me by surprise.”

“You ought have told your friends before,” Solas murmured against the top of his head, and Lavellan swallowed, imagining the shape of his lips, his… His skin felt _hot_, and he felt his fingers twitch, wanting to shove them up under the hem of the tunic and drag them over Solas’ skin—

_When he fucks you the Iron Bull’s touch will cease to compare. _One voice, clear, amused, an older woman’s voice, wry and sharp and slightly cruel.

He pulled back, gasping in a harsh intake of breath, his arms loosely crossing over his chest, but it wasn’t the same as having Solas’ hold him, didn’t feel nearly so secure. He expected the tension to come back, but it didn’t – he just wanted to press himself against Solas’ body and _stay_ there.

“Lethallin,” Solas said softly, his voice quiet and gentle. “You could not hold off on telling them forever. These are your friends, are they not? Don’t they deserve to share in your grief?”

“My grief is my own,” Lavellan muttered, touching the side of his own cheek and hearing the whispers at the edges of his awareness. “Why should the people of the world share in it?”

Solas stared at him, his lips parting. There was something unreadable in his expression, in the sparkling colour of his eyes. He had sad eyes, Lavellan thought. Sad, or angry – it rarely seemed like they were something in between, even when he was smiling or laughing. He itched to ask why that was.

“I’ll call a meeting of your advisors,” Solas said. “Better you tell them than let the wound bleed in drips.”

“Do you wish, sometimes, that you had run away?” Lavellan asked quietly, his elbows pressed in against his own chest. He wished he could drown himself in the sea salt scent that Solas exuded.

_he’s the ocean let yourself drown in him it will be easier when it comes to pass if you are more him than you no resist him be the steadfast rock let the anchor consume you consume it first let it let it not be more be all be everything be elvhen be the unchanging the ancient the constant the ever unbound and you shall make free the peoples of the world you stand on make the fade_

Lavellan hiccoughed, almost choking on it.

Solas’ hand touched his forehead, and once again the voices were quiet, Solas’ hand cool and dry against his skin. Lavellan leaned into it, reaching up to hold Solas’ head there, and he heard Solas inhale.

“Like when I was sick,” Lavellan said, his voice sounding slurred and clumsy to his own ears.

Solas tried to pull his hand away, but Lavellan let out a sharp noise of protest, wordless, desperate, and grabbed him by the wrist, stumbling toward him to keep him from drawing his palm from Lavellan’s skin.

“Please don’t stop touching me,” he said, and he sounded like he was begging, he didn’t mean to sound like that, didn’t mean to fist his hands in Solas’ tunic as though he were about to get dragged away. “They won’t stop if you’re not touching me, they were so quiet, before, they were in the background, I could almost forget them, but then Dorian reminded me and it reminded them and now they’re so _loud_—”

“I have you,” Solas said softly as Lavellan stumbled, falling half against Solas and letting out a desperate noise as he almost fell _away_, and Solas said it again, “I have you, lethallin, peace, peace. Bull!”

“Shit, he okay?”

Lavellan was breathing raggedly, desperate only to touch, to smell the sea salt, and when the Iron Bull’s hand touched his back, he heard himself scream more than he felt it leave his mouth.

_there he is the bull the qun do you want the qun asit tal-eb it is to be the ocean flows the tide goes in goes out let it rush over you let solas sea salt sea breeze and samphire tastes like home doesn’t he you’ve never had a home before the Dalish yearn for a home they couldn’t have and here he is this is home now at the place that holds back the sky and if you only tear it down home can be everywhere home can be the fade-kiss on your skin the anchor consumed and you unanchored eternal unbound or ride the bull and die devoured consumed destroyed ride the bull or let the wolf take you_

“No, no, no, no,” Lavellan cried out, his voice hoarse and sharp and desperate as he fell to his knees, his arms grasping at Solas’ legs, and then Solas was kneeling to touch him, to hold him back, to cradle him as though he were something precious, _and the wolf would_—

Solas’ mouth touched the side of his head as he held Lavellan, and Lavellan wasn’t crying, but he was letting sharp, whining noises as he grabbed desperately as Solas, trying to keep hold of him, to keep his purchase, to make sure Solas didn’t, couldn’t let him go, the silence…

“Kadan,” he heard the Bull say.

“Vhenan, vhenan, vhenan,” Lavellan gasped out, almost as if to drown him out, and he let out a wail as Solas’ arms wrapped around him and he felt himself lifted off the ground, the Anchor glowing brightly from his palm, and the voices there, he knew they were there, but silent.

\--

“What the _fuck_ did you do to him?” Dorian growled out, and Bull was quiet as he watched the Altus get right in Solas’ face, shoving him hard in the chest, but Solas didn’t budge even an inch. They were in the war room, below Lavellan’s quarters, where Lavellan was being tended to by Dalish and Stitches, lying fitfully in his bed.

Bull didn’t want to think about what his emotions were doing right now.

The way Lavellan had pulled away from him to grasp at Solas instead, all but _flinching_ from him… Bull reached out, grabbing Dorian by the back of his robes, and he pulled him back from Solas before he could grab for the elf’s throat.

There was a dark tension in the room, oppressive, and it was all aimed at Solas. Cullen had his hand on the hilt of his sword, his mouth twisted into a worried frown, and Leliana stood beside him, her lips pressed together. Sera was scowling at Solas, and even Blackwall… Blackwall looked more worried than angry, but Vivienne?

Vivienne was incandescent, and Bull swallowed slightly, taking a step back when she stepped forward.

Josephine and Cole sat together, the two of them silent, their expressions equally unreadable.

“The Anchor,” Solas said quietly, “was not meant to be placed within a living body. Even Corypheus might not have been able to withstand its power, his immortality aside. The Anchor draws from the world about it, in order for its power to be made use of. Had the Inquisitor allowed it to merely stand, it would have become more unstable, over time. It would have expanded, out into his veins, up his arm, it would have consumed him.”

“How long would it’ve taken?”

“I don’t know,” Solas murmured. “Precisely. But… two or three more years, perhaps, at the very most.”

“And you knew this?” Leliana asked. “From the beginning, you knew this?”

“I couldn’t be sure,” Solas said, shaking his head. “When he survived at all, I had hopes that his survival would continue, but it was clear… This is why I began to teach him to make further use of the Anchor.”

“To do his magic,” Dorian said darkly. “You have him use the Anchor to draw upon the Fade.”

“The more the Anchor takes from the Fade, the less it takes from the Inquisitor,” Solas said. He looked sick with worry, and that was a comfort, at least, what little fucking comfort could be taken out of this fucked up situation. “You are angry that I might make of him a hedge mage – you would rather I see him made a corpse?”

Dorian growled, and snapped, “And now he is above our heads, screaming, crying, at the voices from the Temple of Mythal—"

“Voices that had not bothered him until _you_ sparked the flame!” Solas retorted, and he and Dorian stepped toward one another, both of them all but snarling. “He was _well_, performing more than adequately, until _you_—”

“Mind out, Solas,” Blackwall rumbled when Solas’ hand clenched into a fist, Dorian and Solas both thrumming with power, and the both of them stepped away from each other. “So, what now?”

“The Inquisitor will need to work through this surge,” Solas said, “as he did the first time. He has to learn to live with that which he drank at the Temple of Mythal.”

“And whose fault is that?” Vivienne asked, and Solas stared at her, rage showing in his eyes.

“I beg your pardon, Madame de Fer? If you recall, I counselled against the _madness_ of drinking from the Well of Sorrows, it was the Inquisitor’s own choice—”

“And he made it because he was so keen to be _elvhen_,” Vivienne said. “An instinct you have only fostered in him, no matter that you scorn it in everyone else. One must only wonder, Solas, why it is that you encourage so much in him that you should discourage in others. That young man all but worships the ground you walk on. You disappeared from the face of Thedas for _months on end_, leaving him pining for his mentor, and then you return to— what, teach him magic out of the goodness of your heart? Where were you? What was it that drew your attention? Either the Inquisitor’s needs were urgent, or they were not.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Solas snapped, disgusted. “You think it an act of abuse, Madame de Fer, that I should rather see our friend live than die?”

“Our friend, is he?” Vivienne demanded. “Then where was it you went, Solas? For nearly four months, wasn’t it?”

“I was researching elvhen artifacts,” Solas said. “Part of what enabled me to teach Mahanon the magic I have taught him now. It is crucial that he commands it—”

“What about the Fade?” Bull asked, and Solas turned to look at him. “You know about these dreams he’s been having?”

“The dreams?” Solas repeated.

“The Dread Wolf’s paws pound hard on the wet grass, pounding, pummelling, punching the soil but they stop when he lets him catch him,” Cole said, his tone almost venomous, his gaze directly on Solas. “He bites.”

“He says,” Bull said, “you won’t let him go in the Fade. That’s why you’re doing all these spirit-sense exercises, right? What are you so scared of, that he’ll get possessed?”

“Mahanon? No, of course not,” Solas said, shaking his head. “Even a concentrated demon would find it all but impossible to tempt him into possession. I don’t wish to train with him in the Fade because I think he might draw unwanted attention from spirits or demons – his power is unlike that of a normal mages.”

“So is yours,” Cole said.

Bull looked at him, but Cole was looking directly at Solas.

“So is mine,” Solas agreed, his expression slightly hard as he met Cole’s gaze. “But my engagement with Rift Magic is not complete, as Lavellan’s is.”

There was a sudden pulse in the room, and they all looked up at the beams of the ceiling. Solas stepped toward the door, but Cole actually shouldered past him, the door slamming behind him.

“Even _Creepy_ is pissed off at you,” Sera muttered. “And if _he’s_ pissed off at you, you must really be fucking about.”

“Why _is_ Cole upset?” Blackwall asked, not moving from his place.

“He thinks I’m working the Inquisitor too hard,” Solas said quietly. “Pushing him too quickly to change.”

“Are you?” Blackwall asked.

Solas hesitated, and then said, “Perhaps. I would be a liar to claim I am not as frightened for him as anyone else,” Solas murmured. He swallowed, the apple shifting in his throat, shaking his head, and then he said, “Would that I could heal him entirely. Would that the world over was different, that… I want only to _heal_ him.”

“Is that all?” Vivienne asked. “What will you do, if he overcomes the Anchor, hm? Will you stay with the Inquisition?”

“No,” Solas said. “I am here for the Inquisitor. At such a time as he is well, I will move on.”

“And where will you go?”

“It is no concern of yours.”

“_Isn’t_ it?”

“I’m kinda tired of all the arguing,” Bull said. “How much is this about Mahanon, and how much is about you guys not liking each other?”

Vivienne glared at him, and Bull felt himself almost flinch, but then she softened, looking a little ashamed, her hand going to her heart. “This magic you’re teaching him… It is _dangerous_.”

“I know,” Solas said. “So does he. But his reward for his work with the Inquisition ought not be a _death sentence_.”

“No,” Dorian muttered. “I suppose not.”

\--

Some nights later, Solas stood before Lavellan in the Fade, as he had at the memory of Haven, so many months ago.

Lavellan wore the ceremonial armour of elvhen royalty, wrought in shining gold that moved as easily as leather, buckles made of crystal glass that shone in the light, and Solas recalled the old palaces that were made entirely out of that crystal, spires that ran all the way up to the skies from the trees from which they sprouted.

Lavellan looked down at his spun gold gauntlets, his expression quietly thoughtful.

“You dressed me in this armour,” he said.

“Yes,” Solas agreed. “I did. Do you like it?”

“Yes,” Lavellan murmured, and he reached up, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m still asleep?”

“You are. Do you hear the voices from the Well of Sorrows?”

“They’re quieter, now,” Lavellan murmured. “I can usually choose to listen to them, they don’t… overwhelm me, like they did today. Cole… I felt him beside me. He was holding my hand, he made them quiet, like you did. He’s been speaking to me, the past few days, when no one else is sitting with me. You’ve kept your distance.”

“Yes,” Solas murmured. He took a step forward.

After a moment’s hesitation, looking as though he might step back, Lavellan copied him. Their poises were the same, Solas noted, each with their heads tall, their shoulders straight, their hands behind their backs.

Solas wondered what it might be like, to pounce and pin Lavellan to the ground, to—

“I let the Dread Wolf catch me,” Lavellan said. He wasn’t looking at Solas, but at the middle distance between them, his gaze unfocused.

“What?”

“In my dream,” Lavellan said softly, solemnly. “I let him catch me. He ripped me apart. Ate me, I think. It was a wet dream. Bull watched me.”

Solas’ mouth was dry. He almost felt angry, that the Iron Bull should be able to watch such a thing unfold and he wasn’t able to do the same – how must have Lavellan looked, on his bed or on his side, moaning softly in his sleep, sweating, perhaps his hips jumping, rocking into the very _air_ before him…?

“Cole says you’re changing me…” Lavellan furrowed his brow, and his gaze came back into focus, turning to look at Solas. “I love Bull. I love him. He’s my heart.”

It stung. Solas felt like taking Lavellan aside and biting him from his neck to his knee, leaving teeth marks all over the skin and showing Bull _precisely_ who Lavellan could belong to, see the magic burn through his body, Solas’ mark on his hand, Solas’ marks… He could make Lavellan his.

Cole had been right, before.

He was letting his feelings encroach on Lavellan’s, letting Lavellan feel that which Solas did, but that was only a sign of Lavellan’s _ascension_, that he was changing at all, that he noted it. Once upon a time, he had asked Lavellan if the Anchor had changed him – it had changed him now, it was changing him, the Anchor driving _into_ him…

He did _feel_ more like—

He could be as Solas was, as the elves were, once upon a time. He could _be_…

And what would Solas do with him, then? Bring Lavellan with him? But it wouldn’t be hard, surely, because Lavellan was so focused upon the Dalish core, so focused upon elvish restoration, he might help Solas draw back the Veil. Solas could bring him with him, and what would Bull matter then?

He didn’t want to be alone.

He wanted—

It was selfish of him. Selfish, yes, but hadn’t he offered Lavellan much, himself, hadn’t he _saved_ him, wasn’t he devoted to ensuring Lavellan live? And Lavellan did want him, now, he _did_.

Solas could see it on his face, the part of his lips, the way he looked at Solas’ body.

“What does your skin feel like?” Lavellan asked. “You smell like the sea. It’s nice.”

Solas didn’t move. If it was Lavellan that closed the gap, as he was doing, stepping forward, then Solas was justified. If it was Lavellan that reached to touch his chest, as he was doing now, his palm warm in the Fade in a way it wasn’t on the other side of the Veil, then Solas was justified. If Lavellan kissed him—

Solas was all but growling as soon as Lavellan’s mouth touched his, and Lavellan let out a gasping cry as Solas pinned him down on the ground. He tasted _sublime_, like fresh forest air and hibiscus and iron, and Lavellan whimpered. Solas paused, his mouth over Lavellan’s, his fingers grasping tightly at Lavellan’s wrists, pinned as they were over his head.

“I shouldn’t,” Lavellan said.

“What, submit so easily?” Solas asked breathlessly, hating himself for how low and dark his voice had become, how easy it was to select what would needle at Lavellan the most effectively. “Was I right, then, when I called you a bitch on the training ground?”

Lavellan’s eyes flashed, and when he surged to kiss Solas back, one hand ripping free, he dug his nails so hard into Solas’ waist that Solas hissed in pain, and bit him in return, driving his teeth into Lavellan’s throat and making him moan. It was rough, and biting, and nasty. It was indescribable, to have Lavellan _touch_ him, to kiss him, bite him, _want_ him—

And it was something special, Solas supposed, that it was in the _real_ world, and not on the other side of the Veil.

\--

“Second time in two weeks,” Bull murmured in Lavellan’s ear, and Lavellan groaned at the feeling of wetness on his skin. “Guess I’m not fucking you enough, huh?”

Lavellan thought of Solas, thought of biting his way into his mouth, feeling Solas bite him back, feeling, _feeling_… Guilt burned his belly, and he turned toward Bull, pressing himself against Bull’s chest. It had been unlike anything he had ever felt, every sensation compounded a thousandfold, his whole body floaty and dream-like, and he’d felt _Solas_ – he’d felt Solas’ want, Solas’ desire, Solas’ possession and his teeth and his ownership, and Lavellan’s own want had surged to meet his.

It had been like they were made up of feelings themselves, thrown together in a cloud as they’d ground against one another, like they were _spirits_…

It wasn’t real. It was… the _Fade_, a dream, it wasn’t _real_—

“Fuck me now,” Lavellan whispered, touching Bull’s skin and trying to force himself not to be disappointed at the scars under his skin – what was wrong with him? He _loved_ Bull, he loved him, wanted to sink beside him, but Solas’ _skin_, Solas’ hands, his teeth, his— “Please?”

“You okay? The voices…?”

_He can fuck you but it won’t feel the same, dear. I did warn you, but when are an old woman’s warnings ever heeded? _The singular voice, again, the woman. Asha’bellanar’s voice. _Your skin belongs to someone else, now_.

“They’re quiet again,” Lavellan lied. “Please, Bull.”

“Okay, kadan,” Bull murmured, and he kissed Lavellan’s numb skin. His body responded.

It felt like his heart wasn’t in it.

**Author's Note:**

> For the time being, I'm no longer writing fanfic: I publish original works now. 
> 
> My debut novel, Heart of Stone, is a slice-of-life romance between a vampire and his personal secretary, and I hope it's the first of many. 
> 
> You can check out more about my published work [here](https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/629449536272826368/landing-page). I am also on Twitter. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your support and your wonderful feedback on my fanfic! It's been essential in pushing myself to move toward original work.


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